Maryland Grows

As Dr. Spock famously said about parenting: “Trust yourself. You know more than you think you do.” This is equally true about gardening, even for beginners. People sometimes ask me when they should pick vegetables, as if it was a total mystery, and I generally reply that they’ll know it when they see it, especially if it’s a crop that’s commonly available in markets and grocery stores. If not, a quick online search or a look at the seed packet or catalog may enlighten you. Yours may not achieve the shiny perfection of the catalog models, but it’ll be recognizable. There are exceptions to this easy-to-tell model (melons are notoriously enigmatic) but mostly it’s not so hard.

Being ready to pick and eat, however, is not the same thing as being ripe, and this is a matter of great confusion among even some experienced gardeners, so I’ll plant a few ideas here that might help. Or make you more confused. I don’t know, I can’t think in this heat either.

1: Will it ripen on the counter?

One of the most common refrains on the Grow It Eat It side of the Maryland Grows Blog is “Pick your tomatoes before they’re ripe!” As long as the fruit color has begun to change from green (a.k.a. “blushing”) you can pick the tomato and ripen it indoors. You won’t be able to tell the difference in flavor as compared to a tomato ripened on the vine, and early picking may avoid damage from insect pests, cracking and other imperfections, diseases, and annoying sampling and/or theft by birds, squirrels, and other animals (including, in some cases, humans).

Tomatoes are a climacteric fruit, which means they will ripen off the plant. Not all vegetables and fruits do this. There’s a useful list (and technical explanation) at this Garden Professors post. You can get away with picking many fruits (sweet ones, like cherries and peaches) unripe and they’ll finish ripening indoors. But tomatoes are about the only vegetable-fruit that’s helpful this way.

2: Does ripeness matter?

Peppers, for example, are non-climacteric, so if you pick a green pepper, or even one that’s blushing with color, and leave it on the counter, it will rot rather than getting riper. (Put it in the fridge! Don’t put tomatoes in the fridge!) Actually, let me back up a moment here, because sometimes this is confusing too. Green peppers and red peppers (or yellow, or orange, or whatever) are not separate varieties of pepper. Green peppers are immature. Give them time on the plant and they will ripen to whatever mature color they’re meant to be. (And sometimes green peppers are purple! But set that aside; it’s too confusing.) Sometimes, though, you want a green pepper, so if that’s what your recipe calls for, go ahead and pick. I also pick a lot of green peppers early in the season to encourage the plants to put more energy into growing leaves and roots before sacrificing to produce fruit, and later on I’ll pick green peppers if the plant is overloaded and branches might break from the weight.

Some other fruiting vegetable plants produce fruits that are delicious when immature. Summer squash is a prime example. We’ve all had the baseball bat-sized zucchinis (oops, forgot to check the plants) and usually they are fine to eat, but the little ones that still have their flowers attached are much more desirable. Eggplants tend to get seedy and bitter if they are too large, as do cucumbers. Bean pods can be picked at any size, but once the seeds inside start to swell they get tough.

Others need to be monitored and picked at just the right moment. Those notorious melons are the trickiest. Cantaloupes will ripen on your counter, but all the others (including watermelons) must be picked ripe or they won’t have great flavor. There are all sorts of techniques for deciding when melons are ripe (please don’t ask me; I have decided to not be a melon grower), but if you wait too long and let them get overripe, they will start rotting or even kind of explode. Also that wonderful fragrance and juiciness are just invitations to neighborhood rabbits and all kinds of insect pests. On the other hand, there’s nothing like a perfectly ripe melon. High risk, high reward.

Winter squashes are more forgiving, at least on the ripe end of things. Once they are ripe (the right mature color for their type, with a nice hard rind) they can usually sit in the garden for weeks and still be pickable, as long as nothing eats them. But they are not climacteric, so if you err on the unripe side of things, you will have a squash that’s technically edible but has not developed its full flavor. If you make a mistake, or the plant dies before the fruits ripen, just chop up the flesh and cook it in a stew with a yummy sauce, and the blandness won’t matter.

You can also eat green tomatoes, of course, but in some people they cause digestive issues, so don’t overindulge in the fried fall classic until you’re sure. And when I say “green tomatoes” I mean the immature fruit, not the mature fruits that are naturally green: Green Zebra, Aunt Ruby’s German Green, etc., which are all deliciously ripe when still mostly green in color. Don’t worry; you’ll be able to tell. You know more than you think.

3: What does “ripe” mean, anyway?

When we think about things from a plant’s perspective, everything comes down to reproduction. Plants want to pass on their genes to the next generation, so they will try hard to make seeds and distribute them. Some fruit-producing plants have mature fruits that are delicious; animals eat them and then poop out the seeds all over the place. Others make fruits (maybe not so tasty, at least in the original species before humans started breeding it) that fall down and rot in place, and plants grow the next season from those seeds.

And guess what? Edible isn’t always the same thing as ripe. I said above that veggies like summer squash, cucumber and eggplant are tastier when smaller. But have you ever seen a fully ripe cucumber? It’s gross. Brown crusty skin, yellow gooey near-rotting flesh. You would not want to put it in your salad. But it’s where the seeds you plant come from. Ever wondered why the plants that grow out of your compost pile (it happens to all of us, unless we are compost wizards) are mostly tomatoes and pumpkins (or other winter squashes)? Because those are among the few fully mature seeds that end up in your compost. Tomatoes when you cut out not-so-nice parts of the fruit, or remove the seeds for making sauce, or just forget about a fruit and it rots on your counter. Squash because that’s part of the preparation process, unless you’re roasting the seeds. (Mature pepper seeds end up in compost, too, but they sprout less frequently, maybe because they aren’t as cold-hardy or otherwise don’t like the conditions. But I have had a few volunteer peppers happen.)

If you throw a summer squash or a cucumber in the compost, though, one that you would have eaten but maybe it went bad before you could, no plants will grow from those seeds, because the seeds aren’t mature. The fruit was not ripe when it was picked. Pickable isn’t always (or even often) the same thing as ripe. Just think how frustrated that plant must be: yet another fruit stolen before it’s ready to fulfill its seed-producing destiny! But hey, we needed dinner.

You, the gardener, might want to grow vegetables to full maturity even if they end up inedible, if you are saving seeds. Seed saving is a complicated topic (Seed Savers Exchange has lots of educational information and is one place to start) but you’ll have the best luck with vegetables that self-pollinate, like tomatoes and beans. Tomato seeds need to come from fully ripe tomatoes, but you can eat the flesh and save the seeds, how convenient! And beans can be left on the plant until the pods are completely dry, which is super easy unless we have a week of rain just when you’re getting ready to harvest.

I hope this helps explain what turns out to be not such a simple topic. You still know more than you think you do. Enjoy your veggies at the right moment, whether they are ripe or not!

By Erica Smith, Montgomery County Master Gardener. Read more posts by Erica.