when to harvest?

[nachoqtpie]

So... does that mean all the weeds are yours too??

 

[chris09]

It is difficult to tell people when to harvest garden produce. Easier to say when it is already too late to harvest!

Actually, it doesn't have to be too late. You can always shell your beans and use them like green lima beans. Even right up until the bean seeds are completely dry and need several hours in the slow cooker. But, when are they just right for green beans?

You now have a real good sense of that, qt. Harvesting for your own table is something of an art, I suppose. You may harvest too early sometimes. The green beans will wilt by the time you have carried them from garden to the kitchen sink . . . Now, that's too early!

I think many new gardeners look at their garden veggies with suspicion. Food, after all, comes from the soopermarket. It does NOT come from outdoors, off plants, growing in soil!

Imagine you are living in prehistoric times! Yes, you are out there beneath the great, wide sky in the wilderness. Loosen your animal skin coverings a little and realize that bathing will have to wait awhile - maybe, the next time you have to ford an ice age river!

Cooked food has appeal but a brush fire hasn't swept thru the countryside lately so, like a bath, that will have to wait, also. You have happened upon some beans!! Pull one gently from the plant with a dirty fingernail and sample it . . . sweet? crisp? Does it have that intriguing squeak when you chew ?

Now, before you make yourself sick . . . harvest an apron pocket-full and take them in to your kitchen to be washed, julienned, sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds or slivered almonds, or whatever else you'd like to do with the freshest produce possible!

And the next time you go out to your garden remember, it is all yours! You are the owner of that garden. Everything you see is yours. You are the sovereign! Oh, except that rock over there, that's not yours. That's mine. But, everything else is yours. Except for that rock over there, and the shade behind that rock - that's mine, also.

Steve

Cooked food has appeal but a brush fire hasn't swept thru the countryside lately so, like a bath, that will have to wait,

You mean they didn't have them Flint Zippo lighters like Fred Flintstone had.

Chris