When do you harvest?

[asdjrocky]

Do you try to pick what is ready once a week? Every few days? Or do you do it like I do? Usually, if I see something that is ready, I just pick it and set it aside. (Or sometimes eat it on the spot if it's a good cherry tomato.) When I water in the morning is when I usually harvest what is ready. This morning it was two cucumbers, two crook neck squash, several green beans and 5 or 6 tiny tomato's. Every single day there is more stuff to pick, so I just pick it.

Any suggestions? Should I harvest less often, or perhaps in the evening? Am I over thinking this? Do these pants make me look fat? Where's Waldo?

[noamnety]

1. Every day, generally

I might skip a day here or there, but if I went a week without picking when the squash are attacking, I'm afraid they'd grow clear out of the garden and up my front steps and strangle me in my sleep.

[asdjrocky]

2. Yeah, I know what you mean.

My corn has another week or so, but it's so tall, and full I keep expecting to hear the beast in the corn coming for me when I'm out there at sunset.

[susanna]

3. I do the same as you; what's ready gets picked.

In the case of beans or peas, though, I pick daily once they're really going. They just seem to produce better when I do that.

[Inchworm]

4. So far...

I wait til it "bolts." :rofl:

I'll do better once things edible start appearing again.

:hi:

[asdjrocky]

5. It's a learning experience for all of us.

What amazes me is the amount of stuff there is to learn. There's a Master Gardener course though our local extension and I'm planing on going through the course.

[Inchworm]

7. I saw that here as well

I forget why I decided not to. It was either that it was 3-4 counties over or that it was offered to those who wish to volunteer there.

I am considering finding a class that just teaches simple..lol.. stuff like X leave is an X plant. I remember learning all this in FFA. It was required.

Hmmm.. Master Gardener...

lol

:hi:

[Gormy Cuss]

6. It's usually better to pick in the morning.

Most edibles are taste better after a cooling evening spell.
Since you water daily, there's no need to worry about the water content for stuff like cukes (if you watered on a more miserly sked, the idea would be to pick watery fruit the next day after watering when they would have the maximum uptake, and stuff like tomatoes just before you'd water so that they're lower in water content and more intensely flavored.)

Pick as frequently as needed. Most veggies produce more if they are picked often, since the reason they're producing fruit is to propogate the next generation. By harvesting before they've established enough seed to fall on the ground the plant thinks it needs to produce more seed pods.

Oh yeah. Those pants DO make you look fat. I don't know where Waldo is.

[asdjrocky]

8. Thank you for answering the most important questions.

Maybe something with pleats?

[Summer93]

9. Teacher/Learning

Everything I know about gardening came from my childhood experience in my Grandmother's gardens. She had both flowers and veggies. Her veggie garden began during the great depression. Everyone in the family pitched in and did the work and then later shared in the produce which lasted the entire family through the winter. One entire field was devoted to potatoes and one to corn. On the hottest days of August there was a lot of canning done. There was always plenty of food - contests between the teens who could eat the most number of ears of corn.

They did not modern irrigation so gallon jugs (glass) were filled with water and taken to the plants that needed it most (watermelon) inverted in the soil next to the plant and then done again the next day.

When we had more raspberries or strawberries than we could use we would take them to town in boxes and sell them door to door.

Oh, the tractor was a Model T Ford car destructed/reconstructed into a tractor - no windshield and no floorboards - daring fun to ride on.

What more can a kid ask for fun and food.

[asdjrocky]

10. Man, that must have been great.

I was told my Grandfather was a big gardener, but alas, I never met him. I'm told, quite recently, that he grew enough to feed his whole family of 11 kids and that he had some left over to sell. This, as with your Grandmother, was during the depression so they had to grow food. So with me, perhaps it's in my blood too.

[bearfan454]

11. Every day

But my veggies don't come in until later. I keep pinching flowers off until the plants are good size. In fact I just started bringing tomatoes in the house about a week ago.