Knowing when to harvest your garden
You have planted your garden and it has produced the vegetables that you want and now you may be wondering when the time is truly best to harvest your garden. Here are a few tips for knowing when to harvest your garden.
There are not any precise dates that you should know when you are looking at harvesting your garden.The harvesting of your gardens will mostly depend on the weather and when you planted your gardens. There are some rules of thumb that can guide you in the harvesting of your garden.
You might think that you need to harvest your vegetables at full maturity but you do not. For the maximum amount of flavor and the best texture your vegetables should be harvested just before full maturity. Some vegetables make it easy to tell when you should harvest them and other vegetables can keep you guessing. Sometimes you can harvest vegetables too late and they will still taste and look fine while other times with certain vegetables if you pick them too early or too late you can ruin both taste and look. To cut down on some of the guessing we can take a look at some of the more popular vegetables that you can plant in your garden and some of those rules of thumb for harvesting them.
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Tomatoes are one of the most planted vegetables or fruit in any garden. Tomatoes should be picked or harvested when they are red in color with little to no orange or green. If you do happen to pick a tomato that is not quite ripe you can go put those tomatoes in a windowsill or any type of outside shelf. The tomatoes will continue to ripen when you leave them out this way. For the peak quality in your tomatoes you will want to pick at 5-8 days after the tomato is fully colored. Leaving your tomatoes too long will have them losing their firmness and some of their taste.
Beans are another popular garden vegetable. You will want to harvest your beans before they get too mature. Your bean should not be full sized and the seeds should be tender and about one fourth developed.
For a general guideline you will want to harvest the beans about 2-3 weeks after the first bloom. If you do happen to leave the mature beans on the plant the bean plant will cease new bean production. If you keep your bean bushes picked clean then the bean plant will continue to keep producing new beans for you. You should never pick the beans when the bean plant leaves are wet because you can spread fungus very quickly to all plants.
Cucumbers are another of the most popularly planted vegetables you will find in a garden. With cucumbers the harvesting size can be determined by the product use. When using the cucumbers for pickles you will want to harvest the cucumbers at about 1 1/2-2 inches in length. For fresh slicing of your cucumbers you will want them to mature to a dark green color and be between 7 and 9 inches before harvesting. A short piece of stem should be left on all cucumbers that are harvested. Cucumbers should be harvested daily since they grow so fast.
Peppers can also be found in many gardens in the United States. The best ways to harvest peppers is to wait until they are their deepest color and then harvest the peppers. Leaving them on the plant until the darkest and deepest color is achieved will give you the best taste.
Knowing when to harvest your garden will depend on what you have in your garden. Many of the things that are planted in your garden need to be harvested daily or weekly for a few weeks at a time. If you are unsure whether a certain vegetable needs harvested you can do a quick search on the internet for the best time.
