Vegetable Harvest!
Vine ripened vegetables are the best you can get!
Time for your vegetable harvest after a lot of dedicated work!
After water, weeding
, feeding and tending to your garden, you deserve the ceremonial trips to harvest your beautiful garden vegetables and flowers. I suggest getting a large basket or bin to pick all your vegetables so that you don’t bruise or damage your harvest.
Did you get help with your garden from your children, friends or neighbors? Invite everyone over! Picking vegetables is even more fun than taking care of your garden and it’s a great motivator to get others involved.
Vine-ripened vegetables are the best you can get with a taste that is unmatched by any grocery store food. Wait until your tomatoes are bright red, your peas are fat and juicy and your summer squash is just the right size.
It is important to harvest your garden even if you don’t need the food, as many plants will stop producing once their seeds are fully developed.
This is especially true of cucumbers, summer squash, peas and broccoli. Tomatoes will rot and corn will be too starchy to eat if left too long on the stems. So, start harvesting and get it while the getting is good.
It is easy to grow too much of some things and not enough of others, so be generous with your abundance and your gardening friends will be too.
It is lots of fun to trade your veggies with other gardeners, and fresh veggies make a great gift when you go to friends homes.
If nothing else, it is better to feed your animals extra produce or compost extra vegetables than letting it rot in your garden which will attract bugs, diseases and pests.
You might also read chapter 20 in my “Victory Garden” in regards to canning, drying and freezing your food so you can enjoy the fruits of your labors year-round.
The key to growing your own garden is not to waste, so preserve your harvest and share your abundance, have a party with left over vegetables for your guests to take when they leave. Trust me, they will thank you later!
Watermelons
I
think everyone knows when a tomato is ripe, and the only trick to
picking summer squash and cucumbers is to harvest them before they get
too big. But are those watermelons really ripe and ready? It is tricky to tell when watermelons are ripe until you get the hang of it.
Is it sight sound or feel?
Well it’s all of the above and can take a little practice.
When you head out to the melon patch look for the most attractive melon and give it a thump, it should have a rather hollow sound that’s difficult to describe.
Once you get the feel for it and you can properly identify the sound of a hollow melon, choosing ripe watermelons will be easy.
For practice, experiment with a bin full of watermelons at the store until you can distinguish the difference in sound made by a ripe melon.
Once I find a ripe sounding watermelon, I look it over and give it a feel and check the underside of the fruit where it rests on the ground which will turn a golden, straw-yellow color as it matures.
A watermelon has curly tendrils attached to the vine and the two or three closest to the fruit will be dry and brittle when the melon is ripe.
Watermelon is tasty during hot summer months, and it also has some great nutrients. You can look forward to an abundant garden harvest!
Give it a try and you will be sweetly surprised!
To close this course the next session will share some inspiring stories about victory gardens and the Victory Garden movement and how it can change our lives and the life of our nation.
