> Next: How to Harvest
Recognizing Ripeness in Vegetables
On this page, find when and how to harvest most vegetables grown in home gardens, including:
-
- How to recognize peak ripeness.
- When to harvest popular and loved vegetable by group.
- Harvest tips for vegetables that mature in batches or over periods of time.
- Harvest tips for vegetables that reach maturity and are all harvested at once.
- When to harvest and store durable vegetables.
- Harvest tips for miscellaneous and special vegetables.
Ripeness and Harvesting
Recognizing ripeness assures your fruit, berries and leafy greens will have peak texture, nutrition, and flavor when you pick them in your home vegetable garden.
Knowing the peak of ripeness is a skill honed over time. Still, there are some tips for getting off to a good start, and some suggestions that will help you recognize ripeness and optimum flavor in your vegetables:
Vegetable Harvesting Recommendations
Leafy Greens
Root Vegetables
Vine Fruit
Tomatoes
Bush Vegetables
Bulb Vegetables
Continuous-Harvest Vegetables
Most leafy greens and many other vegetables that produce a series of harvestable crops as they mature give you produce for weeks or months. They include:
There are two subcategories of continuous-harvest vegetables: One type grows at a steady rate, eventually stops producing and dies, while the other type bears blossoms and fruits right up until the time that they are killed by frost or cold temperatures.
Leafy Greens. Green, leafy vegetables are at their tender best when the plants are young. Make your first harvest by thinning crowded plants from the planting bed. This provides delicately flavored early salads and helps the remaining plants grow more quickly.
They’ll soon produce a second crop in about 10–14 days. Collect newly grown leaves by making a cut across the stem above their central growth point.
The uncut, outermost leaves you leave below the growth point will sprout new leaves and mature in about three weeks, for a third harvest.
Making a series of early harvests means eating greens that lack the stringy fiber and sometimes bitter taste of overly mature plants that are nearing bolt.
Rhubarb, Chinese cabbage, pak choy, and Swiss chard. For leaf vegetables such as rhubarb and swiss chard, harvest the largest outside leaves at regular intervals as they reach full size. For bunching types such as pak choy, pull and cut the root below the growth point when the plant is 4–6 in. (15–20 cm) tall.
Brussels sprouts, artichokes, celtuce, and similar stalk vegetables. Cut the lowest sprouts or leaves from the stem as they reach ideal size. Cut artichokes when their outermost leaves begin to loosen; the harvest will trigger the plant to produce new artichokes. Avoid allowing artichokes to flower, as this will stop production of new artichoke heads.
Asparagus. This spring delicacy reaches its first harvest in its third season after planting asparagus crowns. The crowns produce many subsequent seasons, some for decades.
Cut the broader female stalks when they reach 5–8 in. (15-20 cm.) in height but before their tips start to loosen. At season’s end, leave the last few female spears rather than harvest them. They’ll mature and blossom along with the taller feathery fronds that grow from the willowy male sprouts.
Allowing this foliage to complete the perennial plant’s growth cycle provides nutrients to their root crowns and increases each following years’ yields.
Fruiting vegetables. Many fruiting vegetables produce a succession of ripening crops. Pick their fruit when it develops peak color and its skin begins to thin.
A simple test for ripeness is to dimple the skin of the fruit with a fingernail; if the dimple remains when pressure is released, the fruit is ripe. The fingernail-dimpling test also works with peppers, summer squash and cucumbers.
To enjoy mild peppers or other strongly flavored fruit, water the plants heavily the evening before making an early-morning harvest; for more piquant and robust taste, withhold watering and pick in the afternoon after midday heat concentrates their flavors.
Corn. Each corn plant grows a series of ears nestled in the leaf junctions of its tall stalk. Corn ripeness may be difficult to judge; reveal the level of ripeness by carefully pealing back the ear’s husk to examine its silk and terminal kernels. If the cornsilk is beginning to change from yellow to brown and the tip kernels are swollen and full, the corn is ready for picking. If not, carefully rewrap the husk and examine the ear again in a few days.
Vine vegetables. Most vine plants offer a choice of harvest: pick them green for immediate cooking, or wait until their pods fill and dry, producing dried peas and beans. For immature pods of snow peas and sugar-snap peas desired for use in Asian stir-fry dishes, pick the pods before their peas begin to swell and the pods are the desired size.
Green onion, bunching onion, and scallions. Because onion sets mature individually over a period of weeks even when all planted at the same time, pull or cut them when they reach the desired size for your use.
Mature-Harvest Vegetables
Most other garden vegetables—with the exception of some roots and tubers—have fixed lifespans and definite maturities. They grow, bloom, set fruit or otherwise develop, and ripen according to an internal clock that is rarely affected by growing conditions, including hours of sunlight, temperature, or the amount of water they receive.
Mature-Harvest vegetables include:
Unlike continuous-harvest vegetables, mature-harvest vegetables require some planning to spread out the bounty. Gardeners in areas blessed with longer growing seasons may experience summer produce early in spring and extend the flavors of summer produce through autumn by using early-start and succession-planting techniques [see Growing More Vegetables].
As was the case for Continuous-harvest vegetables, the Vegetables section of this website provides a close estimate of the length of time it takes each major vegetable to mature, as do the directions found on most seed packages and transplant plant tags.
Winter squash, gourds, and pumpkins. These vegetables sacrifice their foliage to develop the final sweetness in their tough-skinned fruits. As long as harvest weather continues to be cool and dry, mature fruit may remain in the field until it is needed. If a late hot spell, persistent rain or a hard freeze threatens, cut their stems with sharp bypass pruning shears and bring them indoors for storage in a cool, dry area.
Vining plants, peas, and beans. Wait to harvest dried peas and beans until the plant’s foliage dies, seedpods are dry, and the pods begin to open, revealing the dry seeds inside.
Pick or cut the pods carefully from the vines, lay them out on a tarp in a warm, dry place for several days to finish drying and fully open. When the pods are open, shuck the peas and beans, discard the husks, and return the seeds to a tarp in full sun to cure and dehydrate completely. This step prevents them from developing mildew or spoiling. After 7–10 days of curing, use or store the finished dried peas and beans.
Onion, shallot and garlic. Lodge the stalks of the bulbs when they begin to send up seed heads. This stops foliage development and redirects their nutrients to their roots, growing larger bulb heads or cloves.
Dig the bulbs when its foliage begins to die. Shake off excess soil and braid or otherwise hang the picked stalks and heads in a warm, dry location for about 10 days, then use them or place them in a cool, dry location for storage.
Melons. Melons peak in flavor near the end of their maturing process, when the stems begin to turn brown in color and the odor of the ripened fruit is strong and inviting. That musky smell is a sure sign that sugars have peaked in the fruit.
To harvest ripe melons, cut them from the vine. Always cut, never pick; cutting protects the vine from damage and avoids harm to other immature fruit that will ripen later.
Head lettuce and cole vegetables. Pick heads of lettuce and cabbage while their leaves are tight, the weight of the head is evident, and they have reached ideal size for your use.
Cabbages will continue to increase in size if not harvested promptly, but tends to become woody. Similarly, head lettuce left too long will split and go to seed. Apply water abundantly to all types of head lettuce and cole vegetables the night before harvest to achieve peak crispness when they are picked.
Potatoes and other tubers. Harvest of potatoes and peanuts should begin when their foliage yellows and begins to die back. New potatoes are an exception: harvest when foliage is at peak size, but before it begins to yellow.
Dig carefully around the margins of the plants and unearth their tubers and peanuts. Discard any potatoes with green skin. Brush soil from the produce, instead of washing them.
After harvest, lay the tubers on the dry garden soil to cure for 2–3 days, then move them in a warm, dry location for at least a week before storing them in a cool, dark spot.
Celery. Harvest celery at the first sign of the plant forming a central flower stalk or when its stalks begin to loosen.
Kohlrabi. A cole vegetable related to cabbage and Brussels sprouts, kohlrabi grows a bulblike stalk with stems and leaves. Harvest it when young for slicing into salads, or when mature by cutting the bulbs from the root and peeling the tough and fibrous outer skin back for use baked or steamed.
Tomatoes. Determinate tomatoes ripen nearly all at once, an ideal trait for cooking, canning and juicing. Pick them green for pickling or frying when their skin first becomes tender; for storing or immediate consumption, pick them when fully ripe.
Durable Vegetables
The last category of vegetables includes the durable plants—mostly root vegetables—that grow to maturity and lose little of their flavor or texture as they await harvest.
The Durable-Harvest vegetables include:
True root vegetables and tubers are ideal plants for harvest timing. As long as weather conditions are cool with temperatures from moderate to frosty (with addition of a heavy coat of mulch to insulate the soil from fluctuation), leave these vegetables in the ground until you choose to harvest them for immediate use or transfer them to a cold frame for extended storage.
They may be dug at anytime after they have matured; leave unharvested root vegetables undisturbed until they are needed.
Jerusalem artichoke, horseradish root, and kale. These plants are perennials that live for multiple gardening seasons. They go dormant during the winter, renewing their life cycle the following spring.
Harvest such vegetables at anytime following the midpoint of their second year after planting. When harvesting during summer or early autumn, do so modestly to conserve most of the plants’ vigor and allow them to store energy for the coming winter.
Fennel and leeks. Sweet or Florence fennel grows leafy overlapping stalks for a swollen junction, or growth point, located near the root. Leeks have a similar growth characteristic. Pull them when they reach 1-1/4 in. (3 cm) in diameter at their base, even during periods of heavy frost and temperatures as low as 10°F (–12°C).
Celeriac, leek, jicama, shallot, and sweet potato. These bulb and tuberous vegetables tolerate long in-ground holding periods. Harvest them from maturity until first hard frost.
> Next: How to Harvest