Picking the Ripe Time to Pluck Produce

The vegetable gardener is bombarded with information on what varieties to select, when to plant and how to fend off pests. There is comparatively little help, though, when it comes to harvest time--when the ear of corn has filled its kernels with the maximum sugar without beginning a descent into too much starch; when a melon has fulfilled its duty.

* Corn. Harvest after the silks turn brown but before they dry up. Once the silks turn brown, check ears before picking by nicking a kernel with your thumbnail: If the liquid that emerges is milky, the ear is ready to be picked. You’ll know your corn is over the hill--in the too-starchy, not-sweet-enough category--when you see the slightest shriveling of kernels. At that point, feed it to the raccoons.

(There is no sure method to keep raccoons out of a corn patch, but one approach is to fold ears of corn down next to their stalks and wrap stalk and ear together with duct tape. Don’t cover the silk, because this is what transfers the pollen down from overhead tassels and ensures dependable kernel formation. Also, because the wrapping should be done before the ears are fully grown, do not wrap the ear too tightly or the kernels may not swell properly in such confinement.)

* Cantaloupe, melon, watermelon: These are the most enigmatic crops to harvest. Everyone has his or her own “sure-fire” way to tell if they are ripe. Here are a few tried-and-true tips.

With cantaloupe, wait until the stem has thinned out and is nearly dry. At this stage, the skin should have the characteristic mottled look and feel rough and dry.

With melons--honeydew, casaba--do not wait for the outer shell to get dry; pick when the color changes subtly from a bright green to a more-subdued lime or almost-tan for honeydew and a deeper, lemony color for casaba. By this time, the stem will have lost its fresh, rounded appearance.

With watermelon, the old knuckle knock seems to work: When it sounds hollow, it’s ready to be picked.

* Tomatoes. It is an art to recognize a fully seasoned tomato at its peak of flavor, texture and color.

Some people like to pick tomatoes that are just under-ripe, bringing them in to finish off. You know when they reach their peak because they are close to hand. This is preferable to leaving a tomato on the vine until past its prime.

Some prefer to try to capture that moment of maximum flavor with the tomato basking in the sun. “Vine-ripened” means something. It helps to know if your plant is of a determinate or indeterminate variety.

Determinate varieties all ripen more or less simultaneously--at least, over a fairly short period of time, such as three weeks. Indeterminates will offer up one or two ripe tomatoes for picking at a time and will produce over a longer stretch--two or three months.

The type will mean that the gardener is extremely busy over the next two weeks or can pick the fruit at a more leisurely pace, even picking one a day.

A ripe tomato is soft on its shoulders, the part that swells slightly around the base of the stem. You can’t always rely on color. The main tip is to pick tomatoes before the skin splits, a definite sign of overripeness.

Sometimes a tomato will display an ugly black discoloration on its underside. Blossom-end rot does not attack all the tomatoes on a vine because it is the result of a lack of calcium in the vine at the moment a tomato is forming. To avoid this condition try to keep plants evenly moist--plant them in well-drained soil and water them in dry times. Tomatoes with blossom-end rot should be discarded.

* The rest of the summer harvest is easier to evaluate. Sweet peppers are picked by their color; hot peppers should be left on as long as possible for maximum heat. Eggplant should be picked while the skin is still glossy. Summer squash is selected by size, as are beans. Both will lose flavor and become tough if allowed to grow too large.