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Harvesting Tips
Vegetables are at their flavorful best when picked at the peak of ripeness, but
how can you tell when a particular crop is ready for harvest if color is not the
only guide? Here are some harvesting tips for some crops that you might have in
your garden:
Bell peppers
You can harvest bell peppers when they're green and as small as golf balls. By
cutting often, you'll have an almost-continuous harvest, as this
encourages the plant to keep blossoming, especially in the beginning of the
summer. Later in the season, leave some green peppers on your plants to turn red
or orange or whatever color your particular variety turns when mature.
Brussels sprouts
As the weather cools in October, check the stems of your Brussels sprouts plants
for the round sprouts that are forming. Harvest these when they have formed into
a small, hard, cabbage-like ball. Start harvesting from the bottom of the stem
and work your way up. To encourage the sprouts to grow large, cut off the top of
the plant and the sprouts will fill out faster.
Cantaloupes/Muskmelons
Look for these signs: a strong, musky or perfumey scent around the stem end of
the melon; the skin color changing from green to yellow or tan, the netting
becoming pronounced, a crack appearing between the stem and the fruit. When the
stem finally separates completely, which is called full slip, the melon is very
ripe and won't last long before turning soft and mushy.
Eggplant
Eggplant tastes best when harvested young. If you cut into an eggplant and find
an abundance of brown seeds, it's already too late for prime eating.
The fruit has a glossy sheen when it's ready to harvest, although the color will
vary according to the variety. The surface of the eggplant turns dull and it
will taste bitter as it gets older and past its prime.
Onions
There's never a time when onions aren't ready for harvesting. They can be picked
and eaten at any stage. No matter how many onions you use during the season,
though, it's nice to have a crop of big onions mature at the end of summer to
store for the fall and winter months.
You can always tell when onions have stopped growing. The leaves will lose their
color, weaken at the top of the bulb and flop over. Let most of your onion tops
fall over by themselves -- maybe 80% or 90% of them -- then bend over the rest
of the tops. Once they're down, leave the bulbs in the ground for another 10
days to two weeks to mature fully. It's not good to leave the onions in the
ground for longer than two weeks after the tops die because they become open to
organisms that can cause rot in storage, or they might even start growing again.
Potatoes
As the vines wither it's time to start harvesting your potatoes. Dig around and
harvest a couple of spuds, then check for maturity by pressing the skin with
your thumb. If the skin doesn't easily break, then harvest away. Wipe the dirt
off the potatoes but don't wash them with water. Save any injured potatoes to be
eaten soon and store the rest at 65F in a humid environment for 10 days to
harden them off. For final storage, move them into a 40F basement where it's
dry.
Root crops
Start harvesting baby carrots when they're the size of your little finger.
This will give you a good start on a long harvesting period; the roots left in
the row will have more room to grow; and you won't be faced with an entire row
of vegetables ready to be pulled on the same day. Besides, the smaller the root,
the better it tastes!
Pull or dig up the largest roots every time you harvest. People are tempted to
leave the biggest ones, so they'll grow even bigger. Don't do it! By always
harvesting the largest roots, you're sure to have them before they're so big
they're all woody and bitter. Again, this encourages the remaining plants to
fill in and grow bigger, giving you what seems like an inexhaustible supply of
medium-sized roots.
If you want to find the biggest carrot in the row just by looking at the
greens, remember this: the bigger the root, the darker the greens and the
thicker the stem. With beets, radishes or turnips, the greens with the thickest
stems will point the way to the biggest roots.
Watermelons
Check the spot where the watermelon rests on the ground. As the melon ripens,
that spot turns from whitish to a deep, creamy yellow. Also, the melon's shiny
surface dulls somewhat when it's ripe. Unripe melons make a sharp ringing sound
when rapped and ripe ones sound muffled. However over-ripe melons make that same
dead sound, so this isn't the most reliable test.
You can also watch the tendrils on the stems to judge ripeness. When the tendril
closest to a fruit turns brown and dries up, the melon is usually ripe. Beware,
however, because some varieties may show this sign and not ripen for several
more days.
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