How to Harvest Vegetables
On this page find the best ways, methods, and techniques to use to harvest vegetables from a home vegetable garden, including:
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- Vegetable harvesting methods.
- Recommendations for specific methods to use to harvest vegetables grown in a home vegetable garden.
- Examples and pictures showing harvesting techniques to use in your home vegetable garden.
Harvesting Vegetables
Here you’ll learn the best methods to harvest every vegetable.
For best flavor and nutrition, some must be cut, others picked or pulled, while still others are dug. Every vegetable in the vegetable guide has recommendations for its harvest [see: Vegetables].
GrownByYou’s garden experts have made your job easier by showing harvest options for the most popular vegetables in America:
For leafy vegetables, use a sharp knife to cut them at their base. Immerse them immediately in cold water.
Use a garden fork to carefully unearth tubers or roots. Pull carrots and beets. Set them on a tarp in a protected, shady spot to dry, then brush soil from them and store them in a dark, dry spot.
Use sharp bypass pruners or lopping shears to cut ripe fruit from the vine. Refrigerate or set them on a tarp in a shady, protected location to cure for 1–2 days, then store them in a dark, dry spot.
Pick beans and peas every few days as they mature to encourage new flowers and fruit to form. Immerse them immediately in cold water.
Break or cut corn, eggplants, peppers, and tomatoes from their stalks as they mature. Immerse them immediately in ice water for best flavor.
Lodge the stalks when they begin to form seed by bending the plant’s stems over and tying them with stretchy plastic tape as shown or knotting the stems.
After lodging, the plant’s growth energy from nutrients gathered by its roots causes its bulb to rapidly grow in size and mature for harvest.
Wait 2–3 weeks for the bulbs to finish their growth and the tops to die, then pull as needed.
After pulling, set the bulbs on a tarp in a protected, shady spot to cure for 4–6 days, then bag the bulbs and hang them in a dark, dry and cool location.