Harvesting Begins
A few days ago, I spotted a few radishes poking above the soil in our garden. Prior to planting, Jeanne Nolan said that when radishes are ready to be harvested they will poke out of the soil.
She had also said that around three weeks we should pull one of our radishes to see if they were ready to harvest. And approximately three weeks after planting, we were able to harvest some of our radishes.
“Keep an eye on them as more pop up,” Nolan said, adding within the next week we should have harvested all of the radishes.
We used a technique called hydrocooling, which is the immersion of crops into water, to harvest.
“I use hydrocooling when it’s sunny out,” Nolan said. “If it’s 60 degrees in the evening, you won’t have to do it. At home, I harvest into water and put [the bowl with crops] into the sink for 10-15 minutes.”
In addition to harvesting radishes, we harvested the three varieties of kale — green curly, red Russian, and Tuscan/dino.
“When harvesting kale, you take from the bottom,” Nolan said. “As I’m harvesting, I’m tidying up the plant, so I start at the bottom. You never want to take all of the leaves off the plant. You want to [keep] plenty so the plant can continue to produce.
“Take leaves from the bottom whether they are big or small,” she added. “New growth comes in at the center.”
When hydrocooling kale, put the leaves in the water, not the stem, Nolan said as she placed leaves of kale into the water.
Our final harvests of the day were the thinning of arugula and basil.
“There are different ways to harvest arugula,” Nolan said. “Find the largest leaves and pull out the entire plant.”
Nolan said she employed this technique Tuesday, July 1, because it was sunny out. Another way to harvest arugula is the “cut and come again” method where you cut the leaves of the plant and allow the plant to continue to grow.
“We’ll thin out the largest plants now and leave the smaller plants so they’ll be less crowded,” she added. “And they will be harvested later this week or early next week.”
Once again we harvested our basil from the top of the plant to keep it from becoming “leggy.”
“You want to put the stems in the water,” like a flower, Nolan said as she placed a handful of harvested basil into a bowl of water to hydrocool. “You don’t want to get the leaves wet.”
While it’s only been three weeks since we planted our garden, Nolan said we will have harvested all of our radishes and arugula before she returns next.
