How to Garden: Pick Your Vegetables

This is our second year planting a vegetable garden, and I've been lucky enough to share the plot with my friend Michele. How I'm really lucky is that Michele picks nearly everyday, and then leaves a basket of fresh produce on my back step.

A few weeks ago Michele went away for two weeks, and suddenly I was thrust into the picking job. And let me tell you, I did a terrible job at it. I was picking cucumbers before their time (they were bitter), carrots that weren't nearly mature enough, and tomatoes that really weren't supposed to be partially green.

I didn't want to mess up our garden in Michele's absence, knowing that in order for plants to keep producing "fruit," you need to pick from them regularly. So I did a little bit of research and came up with this "cheat sheet" on how to know when the vegetables in your garden are ripe enough to pick.

• Beans should look like they're about to burst from their pod when they're ready to pick. Personally, I like my beans a little on the skinnier side and have found it to be best to pick them when they're as long as my pinky but not quite as wide.
• Corn on the cob kernels will have a milky juice coming out of them, if you squeeze a kernel. Any other consistency and the corn is either under done on the stalk (liquid is clear) or over done on the stalk (liquid comes out like paste).
• Cucumbers that you want to use for pickling should be picked when they're as small as three inches but not longer than six inches. Cucumbers for slicing and eating are best around eight inches. I find that when the skin is no longer prickly, the cucumber is ready to be picked. If you let the cucumber get too big and thick, the ratio of flesh to seed gets out of whack, and the cucumber isn't as delicious to eat.
• Lettuce, frankly, looks like lettuce when it's ready to be picked. Don't yank the whole head out of the ground. Instead, pick a few leaves at a time, always from the outside.
• Zucchini/summer squash are a lot like cucumbers as far as size and ripeness goes—six to eight inches long is ideal.
• Tomatoes should be picked when they are fully red (no green showing) and the skin is firm to the touch. Don't let the tomatoes over-ripen on the vine, because they will begin to rot quickly. Of course, you can pick tomatoes before they're fully red but you'll have to artificially ripen them by putting them in a brown paper bag.

I'm getting better about picking the cucumbers—we enjoyed two with last night's dinner. Now I just need the summer squash to hurry up and grow!