Harvest to Table

Vegetable crops will begin to take longer to ripen in September. Give melons, limas, and tomatoes more time to ripen naturally. Eggplants are ready for harvest when they are shiny. Beans, cucumbers, melons, zucchini and summer squash will not ripen or mature once they are picked. They will keep for a week or two in [...]

Fruits are ripening by mid-summer. Keep fruit trees and vines thoroughly watered; avoid letting plants dry out, especially newly planted fruits and fruits growing in containers. Scavenging birds and insects will be looking for an opening as fruits ripen. Use bird netting or reflective tape to scare birds away; spray away insects with a strong [...]

Begin to think about harvest in mid to late summer. Warm-weather crops will be ready then. Keeping the soil evenly moist as crops finish maturing is important; you will stop watering many crops just a week or two before picking to concentrate flavor. Succession planting of summer crops where there is enough season left before [...]

July in the Northern Hemisphere is the month to begin enjoying the fruits of your labor in the vegetable garden. Warm-weather crops will begin ripening this month. Getting crops in at the peak of ripeness is important if you want to enjoy the most tasty and most tender harvest. Look back at your planting records–when [...]

June is the month to set out heat loving crops–zucchini, summer squashes, cucumbers, and melons. Plant these crops on hills–the soil stays warmer. Work a spadeful of compost or well-rotted manure into each hill. Summer vegetables should be kept evenly moist–transplants should be watered every day until they are well established. Don’t let tomatoes, peppers, [...]

May is the month when the vegetable garden begins to look more and more like the summer garden. By the end of May, the threat of late frosts should diminish and tender crops can begin to go into the garden without worry. Crops started indoors should be hardened off before they are planted. During May [...]

Keep a vegetable garden calendar and map. Use the calendar to record when you start seeds, when you plant in the garden, and when you expect to harvest each crop. Use the garden map to record where you plant each crop or plan to plant later in the season. Keeping track of the garden in [...]

March is the month to start growing vegetables in ernest. Seed starting can begin outdoors in mild regions and indoors in cold regions. There are still six to eight weeks, maybe even ten weeks, before warm-season plants can go into the garden in most cool- and cold-winter regions, but now, or soon, is the time [...]

January is the coldest month of the year in the northern hemisphere. This is the month to get seed catalogs and begin planning the spring garden. Beware of false spring days. Check with the weather service or local cooperative extension for your area’s average last frost date–the last expected frost and the start of outdoor [...]

If snow has fallen on your winter vegetable garden, do not despair. Snow is akin to an insulating blanket and the cool-season vegetables beneath can still be harvested. A killing frost or freeze will do the most damage to your vegetable garden in winter–not snow. Protect crops from freezing temperatures with mulch, plastic tunnels, or [...]