Video: Vegetable Harvest Tips
When September arrives, we vegetable gardeners tend to feel a bit overwhelmed. There are so many crops to pick. In this week’s video, I share all sorts of harvest tips. It’s my hope they’ll take the mystery out of knowing when to pick them!
If you’ve been following my weekly videos, you know this has been a very challenging growing season. We experienced late frosts and a bit of “weather whiplash” from so many temperature extremes. Those have set back our garden by about a month.
Fortunately, our vegetable garden is really going into high gear. Perhaps it knows that the season is going to end soon? Bill and I live in Spokane, Wash., where the hardiness zone is roughly 5b to 6a. We could get a frost by the end of this month. I don’t know about you, but that freaks me out!
Are you new to gardening? Or perhaps growing some crops for the first time? Not to worry because my harvest tips cover some of the trickier crops:
- Onions
- Shallots
- Winter squash
- Pumpkins
- Melons
- Tomatoes
I think you’ll especially like the tomato harvest tips. As I explain in the video, even if your tomatoes are green, you can still get them to ripen. Pruning back the newer growth on the plants is one method I use. That forces the plants to focus their energy on ripening the full-sized fruits.
What if a frost is imminent? You can harvest green, full-sized tomatoes and ripen them in a cool, dark place indoors. I hope that lowers your stress level a bit!
Video:
If you’d like to watch more of my weekly videos, here’s a link to my YouTube channel. I also have a table of my 2024 videos, so be sure to check them out!