Harvest my Garden Plants for the best possible Yields continue…

Remember to cut Greens for a second and third Harvest

I force many of my greens to give me a second and third harvest. I never pick only the outside leaves of my lettuce, spinach, chard, or mustard. They’re the oldest and toughest on a plant. Instead, I give the row a clean cut, slicing the plants about 1 inch above the ground. This encourages the plants to send up new tender growth and to try again to develop seedpods. For the harvest, I have a pleasing combination of young, tender leaves from the center of the plant mixed with the older ones.

With some varieties of leaf lettuce, such as Oak Leaf, I can easily get three or four cuttings of young, tasty lettuce. Heck, if you have 4 or 5 feet of wide row lettuce and harvest it properly, a family of four can’t keep up with it.

Can or freeze at Prime time

A friend of mine once said, “Putting up second- rate vegetables means they’ll be third-rate when you eat them.” I agree. If you are canning or freezing, pick only the best vegetables, ones that are reaching the peak of tenderness and flavor. Process them immediately. One reason why home-preserved foods taste so much better than store- bought is the short time between harvesting and processing. Commercial processors just aren’t as quick as we are.

We freeze a lot of corn at our house. We pick ears that are just shy of full ripeness because we don’t want to freeze corn that has “started downhill.” We pick our corn at about 4 in the afternoon when the ears have the highest sugar content and process them right away. Incidentally, the best- tasting corn varieties are the late ones.

For our many jars of pickles, Jan insists on young, small, unblemished cucumbers. We pick them early in the morning when they are still firm and crisp, before the sun and heat cause them to soften up slightly.

Morning is also the best time to harvest chard and beet greens for preserving. The leaves are crisp, the plants have a lot of moisture, and they are most tender.

We freeze our snap beans when they are pencil- size and very tender. They keep their flavor much better than older, fatter beans which seem very bland after being frozen.

Peas need quick processing. Because a big pea patch can take a while to harvest, it may be tempting to pick them one day and freeze them the next. Don’t do it; the quality will go down. You can keep them in a plastic bag in a cool basement or in the refrigerator for a few hours, but you should try to take care of them right away.

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