Growing veggies at home takes a lot of love and patience until they are fully grown, so it’s very disappointing when the finished product is bland, bitter, tough, mushy, or just plain not edible.
More skill is needed to pick a tasty harvest than for any other part of growing a vegetable yard. If you miss the best time to harvest or have trouble with the technique, don’t be too hard on yourself. Even seasoned pros make mistakes with the easiest veggies sometimes.
Each crop is different and needs a different way to be harvested, stored, and checked to see if it’s ready. Some veggies, like cut-and-come-again crops, can be picked over and over again during the growing season, while others will be picked all at once.
Check our harvesting tips to see how to pick your specific type of plant.Additionally, always keep your seed packets for future use. They contain information on when to harvest the veggie, its full size, and a picture of what it should look like when it’s ready.
1. Know What Ripe Looks – And Feels – Like
If you harvest a food too early or too late, it won’t taste good. You can find an average date of maturity on the seed box, but there is no set time when a crop can be picked. It’s up to the gardener to know how to tell when the food is ready.
Some crops should only be picked when they are fully ripe, while others are more flexible and will keep getting riper after they have been picked.
Root veggies, summer squashes, sweet corn, eggplants, garlic, zucchini, cucumbers, beans, and peas are all crops that need to be picked when they are ready.
2. Harvest At The Right Time – In The Right Weather
Early in the morning is the best time to pick most veggies because they are still crisp from being wet all night.To keep veggies from going bad, don’t pick them when it’s very hot outside.
Also, don’t pick veggies right before or right after it rains. If you walk on the earth to get to the crops, you will compact it, making it less able to hold air pockets and drain.
Also, when veggies are being picked, their wet leaves may splash water onto other plants, which makes it more likely that diseases will spread.
Some plants, like onions and garlic, should not be picked until it has been dry for a few days. They are more likely to go bad if they are picked when they are wet.
If it’s going to rain hard after being dry for a while, quickly pick any tomatoes and other soft fruits that are ready, because they can soak up the water and swell, which can cause them to split.
You should also gather when it is dry so that you don’t spread bacteria that can make people sick. Listeria grows best in wet soil and can spread to root crops and veggies that don’t grow very high. It is much easier to find the germs on crops after it has rained.
3. Tailor Your Technique To Different Vegetables
When you harvest veggies, the main goal is to get them off the plant or out of the ground. But different kinds of crops need different ways of being grown.
4. Use The Right Tools For The Job
To harvest veggies, you don’t need a lot of tools, but the ones you do use should be of good quality so you don’t hurt the food.
5. Extend The Season By Harvesting Little And Often
When picking veggies, it’s important not to get too many; you want to be able to enjoy them all season long.
Succession planting helps reach this goal by spreading out planting and mixing different types of plants that grow at different times. But there is a skill to getting many crops to produce more.
Some crops, like beans, peas, tomatoes, and squash, produce more when they are picked regularly. Pick the vegetables as soon as they taste good, starting with the biggest ones. The plant will keep giving you food for weeks.
You have to pick the beans and peas every day until they stop giving you food. So that the plant can keep making pods, don’t let the pods get old.
Tomato plants stay active even if you pick them often. If you want the biggest harvest, pick them when they are still a little green and let them keep ripening on a warm shelf inside.When they are 6 to 8 inches long, zucchini should be picked. If you let them get too big, the plant will slow down.
You can grow some plants as “cut and come again,” which means that the heart of the plant stays the same and keeps sending out new shoots.
When you gather lettuce and greens like kale, Swiss chard, and collard greens, only the older, outer leaves should be taken off. The growing point in the middle should be left alone.
Leave some turnips and beet leaves on the plant while you pick the tasty leaves. This will not hurt the main plant.
Some plants, like broccoli, will grow more small plants and light greens after the main head is taken off. Kohlrabi, on the other hand, will keep growing tasty leaves.Cutting leeks off a couple of inches (5 cm) above the soil will let them keep growing as long as you don’t touch the roots.
6. Cure Vegetables Before Storing
A useful skill to learn is how to keep veggies fresh. Of course, you will want to store some of your garden veggies even if you pick and eat them every day.
There are some foods that freeze, can, pickle, or dry really well. Other crops, on the other hand, can be kept in a cool basement or shed for months.
Some crops, like potatoes, onions, carrots, parsnips, garlic, and beets, tend to have a lot of extra that needs to be kept properly to last longer.
Before putting vegetables away, they need to be dry. If they aren’t, they will grow mold. You can just put them on a table to dry for a few hours if you plan to eat them soon. Long-term keeping, on the other hand, takes more work.
To store onions, you need to let them “cure” for two to three weeks. The skin should be papery and the neck should be dry. Dry them inside on a clean, dry surface in a single layer. Keep them in a crate or basket that lets air flow in a basement or garage that isn’t warm.
Less watering the potatoes in the weeks before they are picked will make the skins tougher, which is the first step in storing them. To be sure it’s ready, wait until the plant dies off.
After cleaning the potatoes, spread them out to dry inside for 10 to 14 days. After that, put them away in a dry, warm room in paper or hessian bags.
When you gather carrots, parsnips, and beets, you should cut off the greens. Clean them with a brush and set them on the table to dry for a while.
They’ll stay fresh for a few weeks in the fridge or up to a few months if you put them in sand in a bucket or box. Leave them in a room that is cool and not hot.
Also See: How To Get Rid Of Tomato Hornworms: 5 Natural Solutions To Control And Repel Them