Harvest Tips: Get the Most and the Best

Fall harvests are different from ongoing summer harvesting. The goal is to bring in everything that's usable, before damp and cold ruin them. Here are some tricks I've learned to prolong the harvest, improve quality, and preserve things longer in good condition. You'll find tips for greens, squash, peppers, tomatoes, and herbs.

Tomatoes are many folks' first concern. You can help keep them going longer by removing dead or yellowing leaves, providing good air circulation (by pulling out less-productive plants if need be) and covering them if overnight frosts are predicted. You can also ripen fruit faster by cutting the plants back. If you clip off  the tips of the vine that have new flowers and very immature (dark green, undersized) tomatoes, the plant can put all of its energy into ripening those that have a real chance of being usable.

However, they won't go forever, and if you are seeing cracking, mold, soft spots, frost damage, or brown stems, it's time to call it quits on the season. If a heavy rain is forecast, that is another cue to harvest. When the plants get a lot of water all at once, they take it up so fast that it expands the fruit, making them crack, spoil faster, and lose flavor. You will want to harvest all usable fruit, then cut the plant at ground level and compost it.  (or cut branches off and take them under cover for picking and sorting.) As you pick, sort the tomatoes into 3 boxes or pails:

1. Fruit with some red color that are on their way to softening for the table. Use these over the next week or two. They can ripen on the kitchen counter.
2. Fruit with a pale green color and normal size, with or without some beginnings of red. These will ripen indoors over time if you have the space. (I put them on newspaper or in cardboard flats under the kitchen table.) If you don't have space to lay them in a single layer somewhere, they can be canned or frozen as green sauce/salsa/chutney, or fried, or used as a salad ingredient. In some parts of Italy, only green tomatoes are used in salad; red ones are cooked.
3. Dark green fruit. These will not ripen indoors; they'll just rot. You can use them as-is for pickles or chutney. Or you can compost them. (Or feed them to animals)

Use tomatoes promptly as they ripen--no point in letting them get funky and have to throw them out. If there are more than you can use fresh, but not enough to can or process--or if you don't have time now--cook them in the oven, stovetop, or microwave, and throw them in the freezer to deal with later. Or grill them, if you have the barbecue fired up. If you are really overwhelmed and need to get your harvest safe before you lose it, you can just put tomatoes straight into the freezer in bags. They will take up more room than if you'd cooked them somehow, but they'll be totally usable. Making that big batch of salsa or sauce might be a more attractive prospect in January than it is now.

Unripe tomatoes should be stored longer-term at cool room temperature; the floor or a pantry or back room is good. The best way I know of to ripen and store tomatoes is to use box flats--the cardboard trays that result when stores cut boxes of drinks or canned goods for display. Some people call them beer flats; any store that handles beer or soft drinks will have them if you can get them before they are put in compactor. Whatever container you use, the tomatoes should be in a single layer, and it saves a lot of time in the end if you arrange them from most ripe to least ripe in the box, shelf, floor, or whatever. Check them every few days, and remove both the usable ones and those that are leaking, moldy, or dubious in any way.

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Peppers are another summer crop that can't go long in cold wet fall conditions. There are several great ways to store and use them. Hot peppers are more adaptable, faster-ripening, and less susceptible to mold, so keep a close eye on sweet peppers and cook them soonest.
I like to keep some pepper plants in pots, especially if they need a long season or are very susceptible to sunscald. Their small root systems adapt well to a large pot,  and they prefer a light soil, so potting mix works well for them. I can move the containers so that they get midday shade when the danger of sunscald is great, and full sun during the early and late parts of the season

• If you have a greenhouse or sunny window, potted peppers will be happy indoors and continue ripening fruit. I have some Criolla Sella plants that I overwinter in my unheated greenhouse. They are a different, more hardy species than other peppers. But even tropical peppers can overwinter in the house.
• Plants or branches can be cut and hung up indoors. Usually a lot of fruit that is full-sized but green can be ripened this way.
• Fruits with sunscald or any other damage should be used or frozen right away.
• Unless you live in a very very dry climate, don't attempt to dry peppers in ristras (strings.) Instead, spread them out with plenty of airflow in a dry place. They dry best if you clip off the green stem and cap with kitchen scissors and spread them on racks with air all around. Use a fan if needed, or a dehydrator if the weather is moist.
• An easy condiment is pepper vinegar: chop hot peppers, salt them, and put into a jar, then fill it with vinegar. Keep in the fridge for long storage. Keeps pretty well on the table or kitchen counter too.
• My recipe for fermented peppers or hot sauce is HERE.
• Sweet peppers or fleshy hot peppers that you don't want to dry are easy to prepare for freezing. Either blanch them (immerse in boiling water) or fry them (this gives the best flavor) and freeze.
• Pickled peppers can be either long-brined or vinegar-based. Recipes abound.

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Summer squash are a feast-or-famine kind of thing. Hyper-abundant during the season, then gone.
You may eke out a few extra harvests or get past a freak early frost by covering the plants with bedsheets. Then when you have a good day for harvest and frost is in the forecast, take everything you can and compost the plants.
Every part of the plant is edible. So if you're really trying to save money or you are short on other foods, you can cook (and freeze afterwards, if desired) the young foliage and growing tips. They have a pleasant mild flavor and lose their prickles when cooked.

• Like all squash, they don't freeze well as a raw vegetable. But cooked squash dishes can be frozen. When they're thawed and reheated, you'd never know they'd been frozen. Solve two harvest problems at once by cooking tomatoes and zucchini together (preferably with olive oil and basil) and freezing in containers. You will be so glad to be able to thaw out some pure summer next January!
• Squash blossoms are a delicacy in both Mexican and Italian cookery. You can harvest the male flowers all summer, but at the end of the season, pick every flower you can and dry or freeze them. The petals are the edible part; tear them off and discard the base and hard parts. They are traditionally stuffed and fried, but I generally just add them to soup, quesadillas, or pasta sauce. They make an outstanding pasta sauce just cooked in butter with a few green onions or chives.
• Most people don't realize that zucchini keep better on the kitchen counter or in a bowl on the table--or a box on the shelf--than in the fridge. Their big enemy is moisture and mold. Use the smallest first. You can harvest them all the way down to thumb size. Large ones last longest; they can last up to 2 months, but aren't as tasty as the little ones.
  
• Summer squash can be dehydrated, making a lightweight, low-volume product that can be stored in jars in the cupboard. This is how Native American tribes who migrated over the course of the year were able to store and use their squash.
  

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Winter Squash will store for months and months indoors, but it can't stand any frost. As the vines start to look yellow and wilty in the fall, get ready for harvest. You might want to cut back on water so the ground is not wet and the fruit starts to harden more. You can also cut the vines so that no new squash fruits are formed. Flowers and immature fruits are both edible and delicious--the very young fruits are just like summer squash. If these are removed, the plant's energy will all go into sweeter, longer-storing mature fruit.

1. Watch the forecast and your own sense of the weather. If frost threatens, it's time to harvest--even if you have to do it by flashlight. Squash that has been frosted will get rotten spots and spoil.
2. Harvested squash should go under cover where it will stay dry and safe from frost. Heavy dew or rain can promote rot. Don't wash them, but wipe off any mud and bring it into a warm place to cure.
   
3. Sort the squash by maturity: a fully-mature squash will have a brown, hard or corky stem, not a green soft one.  The skin or rind of the squash will be too hard to pierce with a fingernail. These will last 3-9 months if cured properly. Use small squash with soft skins within a couple of weeks, cooked like summer squash. Fruit that is more mature but not fully ripe should be used within a month.
   

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Curing is the step that helps the squash store longer at room temperature, and fully develops the sugars that give great flavor. To cure, the fruit needs a dry warm place with good air circulation for at least a week. Ideal curing temperature is 80 to 85 degrees. If daytime temperatures are still warm, you can use any dry airy place. Our nights are cold and dewfall is heavy, so I bring them inside and put them in the loft. After curing, you can store squash anywhere that is dry (humidity below 85%) and not freezing--55-60 degrees is ideal, but I just put them under the bed or on the floor somewhere. Milk crates work well to store squash, allowing them to be contained and compact but still airy.

Start eating delicata and acorn squash first; they are good from harvest until January. Butternut (moschata) and maxima squashes keep developing their flavor until November, and usually store in good condition into the spring.

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Herbs vary a lot in how they can best be stored, or even if they need to be.

• Most herbs dry well, but the amount of flavor that is retained in the dried product will vary depending on the plant. How you dry them makes a big difference as well. They should not be dried in the sun, which will vaporize the flavors. They should be in the shade and indoors, unless your climate is extremely dry. Nighttime moisture will cause the herbs to turn black and lose flavor. You can pack most herbs very loosely in a paper bag and hang that, or you can make them into bunches no more than an inch thick where they are tied together. Rubber bands and coathangers work well to hang herbs for drying. When they are crispy-dry, take them down and store in airtight jars.
  
• Basil loves heat and is daylength-sensitive, so it wants a summer garden, not a winter windowsill. The flavors are oil-soluble, so your best bet is to just make pesto and freeze that. Or heat the leaves in oil and then freeze. Or coat the leaves in salt and cover with oil, then keep in the fridge. Or see the infused oil recipe under Rosemary, below. You can dry it, but will lose a lot of the flavor.
• Parsley is very cold-hardy and will stand through the winter in most climates. It also dries well. Or will grow indoors in winter.
• Sage and Thyme stand outdoors all winter, but lose quality and will not make new leaves. They dry well for winter use.
• Rosemary grows outdoors in zones 7 and above. People try bringing it indoors in colder climates, seldom successfully. Try this: clip a bunch of twigs to the same length and pack them into a jar. Fill it with oil and infuse for a week or two. Drain off the oil and discard the herb, as well as any water in the bottom. The oil will give the flavor of rosemary without the needle-like leaves. It keeps well in the cupboard.
• Dill is easily dried or used to infuse vinegar, with or without some garlic and hot pepper. Great for salad dressing.
• Cilantro loses its flavor when dried. It is quite cold-hardy, and can be grown outside or on a windowsill and clipped as needed.

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Greens are hardier than summer crops, and don't need to be all taken in at once, unless deep, deep cold is expected. But the way you manage and harvest greens can make the difference between a slug-ridden, unpalatable crop and one you can use and enjoy all winter.
Of course, cabbage is supposed to make a head for harvest all at once. But most leafy greens can be managed so that each plant can be "cut and come again." Collards, kale, chard, and Asian greens like Tatsoi do well with this style of harvest.

Lettuce and Salad Greens:
Most commercial operations get a cut or two of baby greens and then replant. But with the right kind of harvest, yours can keep growing and giving good harvests for several months. The photos above show how.

• Rather than harvesting whole heads, harvest the outermost leaves weekly. This prolongs the life of the plant in several ways. Not only does it mean you harvest bit-by-bit, but it actually changes the life cycle of the plant to keep it in more vigorous growth. The plant responds to this "renewal pruning" by growing faster, and staying longer in its vegetative, or "teen-age" stage, when the leaves are juicier and sweeter.
• Commercial salad growers clip the plants with a sort of mower. But you will get better quality and many more harvests per plant if you pick leaves by hand instead of cutting.
• Grasp the leaf you want to harvest at the very base, pinch, and twist. The leaves will be bigger and stay fresh longer, while the plant will grow better without cut surfaces that host rot.
• Fastest regrowth occurs when you leave 6 to 8 leaves in the center of the plant. This gives it enough leaf surface to photosynthesize and the hormonal cue to grow faster. Commercial operations that cut a bed of greens straight across often get only 1-3 cuttings, while hand harvest leaving the center leaves can give you 12 or more harvests per plant.
• If very severe weather threatens and you need to harvest a really large amount of greens at once, here are some options: Lettuce and salad greens can be kept as whole heads wrapped in damp cloth in a box in a cool place. They will keep for about a week, possibly two, depending on temperature and the variety. Brassicas, including all the cabbage, radish, Asian greens, mustard, kale tribe, will keep longer than lettuce with that treatment. They can all be turned into fermented products for longer storage by salting into (non-metallic) buckets or jars. For freezing, just dip into boiling water till wilted, bag, and freeze.
• Make sure to remove and compost any yellow or pest-eaten outer leaves. Slugs primarily target old moribund leaves, so keeping plants tidy will prolong their life and vigor. This is true of every plant you grow. Whether it's lettuce, rhubarb, or tomatoes, removing yellowed leaves or those that are down in the mud will cut down on pest problems and keep your plants healthier.