When to Harvest the Most Common Autumn Vegetables: A Beginner’s Guide
After you plant your broccoli, sow your carrots, and spend months tending to your fall vegetables, knowing when to harvest is important. Join farmer Briana Yablonski to learn when to harvest fall vegetables.
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If you’re new to gardening, it can be overwhelming to keep track of all the details involved in growing vegetables. Seeding rates, proper planting times, and pest management are just a few key factors to learn about.
Don’t stress over not knowing everything. Even if you make a few mistakes along the way (we all do), you’ll eventually end up with veggies that are ready to harvest. But if it’s your first year growing, you may not know when a beginner should harvest vegetables.
I’ll cover some general tips to keep in mind when you’re determining when to harvest vegetables as a beginner. Then I’ll share some advice for picking veggies you may have growing in your fall garden.
General Tips for Harvesting Autumn Vegetables
It’s helpful to know some basic information on the factors that impact when you should harvest your vegetables. Reading through these pointers will help you determine when your fall veggies are ready to cut or pull from the garden.
Know the Days to Maturity
Every crop has a specific number of days required to reach maturity. Often, this number refers to the number of days from seeding to harvest, but it can also refer to the time from transplant to harvest. You can usually find a crop’s time to maturity by looking at the seed packet.
This number is especially helpful for beginner gardeners looking to harvest vegetables. Let’s say you plant ‘Cherry Belle’ radish seeds in your garden on September 1. Since the plants have a maturity time of 24 days, you can expect to harvest them around September 25.
The time to maturity isn’t a set rule, but rather a guide. As days shorten in the fall, plants often take longer to mature than they do in the spring. Your crops are unlikely to be ready to harvest before their predicted maturity date, but they may not be ready until a few weeks after this date.
Realize How Daylength Impacts Growth
Day length has a big impact on how quickly plants grow. This makes sense when you remember that plants rely on light to convert water and carbon dioxide into sugars and oxygen.
When days fall below ten hours long, plant growth all but stops. That’s why farmers aim to have all their winter crops fully grown by the time this Persephone Period arrives.
Plants still grow leading up to this ten-hour day, but they’ll experience increasingly slowed growth as days get shorter and shorter. Therefore, radishes sown on October 1 may take a week longer to mature than those sown on September 1.
Consider One-Time vs. Continual Harvests
You can categorize vegetable harvests into two main types: singular and continuous. Single harvest crops, like carrots, beets, cauliflower, and cabbage, offer only one harvest. After you remove the edible portion of the plant from the garden, it’s done producing.
Other crops, including kale, arugula, and spinach, provide multiple harvests if you use the proper techniques. Remove the larger outer leaves to enjoy, and leave the smaller leaves to continue growing.
Note Cold Tolerance
Many autumn vegetables can tolerate cold temperatures and even a frost, but all of them have their breaking points. In general, many fall greens and roots can tolerate a light frost, but they’ll start to experience damage when air temperatures dip below 30°F (-1°C). The exact cold tolerance varies by species and cultivar, so look up what temperatures your crops can tolerate.
If you want to protect your plants from a frost or cold temperatures, you can always cover them with row cover.
If you have cold-sensitive crops like basil, tomatoes, and peppers growing in your fall garden, the first frost is a key date to keep in mind. These plants will die at the slightest frost, so harvest them entirely before this cold weather strikes.
When to Harvest Autumn Vegetables
Now that you know some general tips for determining when your crops will be ready to pick, let’s dive into some details. I’ll go through a few crops and explain when beginners should harvest these vegetables.
Arugula
A spicy green that’s equally delicious raw in salads and wilted with pasta, arugula thrives in cool fall temperatures. Direct sowing the tiny seeds in your garden is the best way to plant this green.
You can technically harvest arugula at any time, but most gardeners prefer to pick it at a baby stage for salads or at full-grown size for cooking. Baby arugula is at its prime when the leaves are between three and four inches tall, while mature greens are best around eight to twelve inches.
Removing the larger outer leaves and leaving the smaller interior leaves allows the plant to produce new growth, enabling you to enjoy a second or third harvest. I like to use a knife to cut all the leaves of each plant about an inch above the base of the plant, which leaves the smaller leaves intact.
Beets
Beets are ready to harvest two to three months after sowing. The time to maturity depends on both your planting date and your preferred root size.
Fortunately, it’s easy to tell when beets are ready to harvest; just look at the roots! The tops of the beetroots will be visible above ground, and you can use this sneak peek to determine the size of the entire root. Most people like to harvest their beets when the roots are between two and three inches wide, but any size is fine.
Broccoli
Broccoli is typically transplanted, and the maturity date refers to the time from transplant to harvest. However, the plant’s appearance lets beginners know when to harvest this vegetable.
The size of the individual buds, rather than the entire head, is the best indicator of when broccoli is ready. Look for buds that have slightly expanded, but are still relatively tight. If you wait too long, the buds will start to flower.
Carrots
Candy-sweet carrots are some of the most popular fall crops, but they require some patience. Their long germination time and slow growth mean you should give fall carrots at least two to three months to mature. Sowing in late July or August works well for growers in most of the United States.
Looking at the days to maturity is one of the easiest ways to determine when carrots will be ready to harvest, but you’ll probably need to add on a week or two if you plant them in late August or September. When you get close to the maturity date, you can pull one carrot to see if it’s ready to harvest.
You can harvest the roots at any size you like, but most people like to wait until the roots are at least five or six inches long. If you want to store them for the winter, remove the tops and place the roots in an airtight bag or container.
Cauliflower
Cauliflower takes between two and three months from the time it’s transplanted until it’s ready to harvest. Your goal is to harvest cauliflower after the heads reach a mature size, but before the florets begin to separate.
If you’re growing a sprouting variety, the ideal harvest stage is a bit different. For these cultivars, wait until the stems elongate and florets develop space between each other.
Kale
Kale is a versatile crop in terms of the ideal harvest stage. You can sow seeds close together and pick small leaves for a salad, or leave a foot of space between plants to allow them to form larger leaves.
Regardless of the plant’s size, select the largest outer leaves and leave the smaller ones on the plant to mature.
Lettuce
You can harvest lettuce at multiple stages, and knowing the ideal end product will help you determine when to harvest.
If you’re growing lettuce for baby greens, you can begin harvesting when the plants are three inches tall. Picking off individual outer leaves works well if you only have a few plants, or you can use a knife to cut multiple plants an inch above their base. Both methods will leave the smaller leaves intact, allowing them to continue growing.
Head lettuce is best harvested when the plants have fully developed. You can use the days to maturity as a guide, then rely on the look and feel of lettuce heads. For example, butterhead lettuce should feel slightly firm to the touch when ready, and romaine will be full and heavy.
Radish
The best time to harvest radishes depends on the variety you’re growing. Some radishes are best when they’re between the size of a quarter and a golf ball, but storage varieties can grow much larger and still taste great.
Checking your variety’s ideal harvest stage and the maturity time will help you determine when to harvest. Since you can’t see the roots when the plants are growing, pull a test radish a few days after the plants reach their maturity date.
Spinach
A favorite green for many gardeners, spinach is ready to harvest about a month after sowing. You can pick the leaves at any time, but note that smaller leaves are best for salads and larger leaves for cooking.
Use your fingers or a knife to cut or pinch the largest outer leaves from the plants. Allow the smaller leaves to remain on the plant and keep growing until they are ready to harvest.
