Tips for Harvesting
If you ask me, there’s nothing better than a dinner table full of veggies grown in your own backyard – they’re fresh, nutrient-dense, and have a very small carbon footprint (no travel involved!). If you planted a garden this year, you have likely been enjoying the fruits of your labour for a couple weeks now. Here are a few of my favourite vegetable harvesting tips:
Harvest vegetables daily: explore your garden each day to see what has ripened. Picking vegetables as soon as they’re ripe often encourages the plant to produce even more.
Bigger is not always better: most vegetables are at their peak tenderness and flavour when they’re of medium size. Leaving vegetables to grow too long & big can cause them to feel tough and taste bitter. Most seed packets will describe each vegetables’ ideal size for harvest.
Look for signs of trouble: when you’re harvesting, watch for signs of trouble, such as yellowing leaves or rotting fruit. Remove the problem by trimming it from the plant – preventing it from sucking nutrients and energy away from its healthy counterparts.
Harvest honourably: be gentle with your plants, give them a good sprinkling of water, and thank them for what they’ve given you. A plant that is well cared for will continue to care for (feed you) in return.
Have questions or comments? Feel free to forward them to jaymie@localhippie.net
Have a happy hippie week!
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