Garden Harvest Tip

(Squash finally growing well)

I get the Harris Seed Newsletter on my email, and I thought this last one was very interesting. And just to make it more interesting I stuck some pictures of the garden from today. It's amazing how fast things are growing now! Well, I have to tell you first...For some reason the ants love my garden, and they were crawling over all the plants, and if you looked inside a flower of the squash plant you wouldn't even be able to see the yellow of the flower because it was black with ants! Everybody kept telling me, "No, ants don't eat leaves," or "Ants don't care about garden vegetables," but THESE ants do! The plants were not growing well, and the leaves were obviously eaten away. I even sat down and watched a single ant to see what it did, and it went along the edge of a leaf and ate it away methodically moving down the leaf and back up the edge. So I got some really good bug killer that's ok for garden plants and just soaked the whole garden with it. I actually used almost the whole bottle just spraying everything, and you know what? All the plants are thriving now! And I don't see ants in the garden anymore!

(Tomatillos in the greenhouse)


Ok, so here's part of the Harris Seed article:

Summertime means harvesting in hot weather! By cooling your produce with water before refrigerating it, your vegetables will arrive at the dinner table fresh, crisp, and sweet.

While a vegetable is growing in the garden, it naturally creates and holds heat. That "field heat" stays within the plant even during cool parts of the day. After harvest, the plant keeps creating heat, which turns its sugars into starches. Until the vegetable is cooled down, it will keep losing sugars - and its sweet taste!

Hydro cooling- cooling with water - is the most effective way to decrease the core temperature of most crops. By immersing vegetables in cold water right after harvest, you can cool them evenly and retain their crispness. Leafy vegetables reach a cool core temperature in just a few minutes, and then they should be removed from the water so they don't become waterlogged. "Chunky" vegetables like zucchini, carrots, or beans take from 5-15 minutes to cool evenly, and this soaking time can serve as a first rinse.

After removing vegetables from the cooling bath, finish washing them, dry off excess water, and store them in the refrigerator. They should stay moist but not wet. By hydro cooling before you refrigerate, you'll have sweeter, crisper produce that will stay fresh longer than by refrigerating alone.

(Cantaloupe in the small greenhouse box)