Garden 12: The Harvest Touch

For every fruit and vegetable, there exists lore on when to pick it. For most, there are competing versions. One grandma knows a melon is ripe by the sound of of a thumb-thump. Another by the tendrils of aroma reaching out to her nose. Someone else notices the brown of the stem or a slight give to the flesh around it. 

I collect these nuggets of wisdom, and have found some to be true (others, not), but that's mostly the anthropologist in me, collector of ethnobotanical tidbits. As a gardener, I've come to rely on pretty much one indicator for anything I'm picking: it'll come off easily when the time is right.

For once, I'm not trying to be a smart-ass. Fruits and vegetables really do just let go when they're ready. The blueberry falls off in my hand, the zucchini snaps free with a quick twist. You have to know how to pick it--tug at the zucchini and you're likely to get the whole vine--but as long as you have that trick down, the ripe ones come off easy. Most of the time, the technique has to do with bending the stem backward, which makes it snap without tearing off a section of branch. Thumb pushes on that little elbow of a tomato stem while your hand pulls the fruit in the opposite direction, and the ripe globe falls into the basket of your fingers.

The un-ripe fruit clings. If it is not ready, a gentle touch won't make it come. Forced harvest ends in plants peeled and split, scarred and open to attack by fungi and bugi. The apple lands in your palm with a big spur that could have yielded again next year. The berry loses its grip, but tastes sour, and maybe whips back at you with a thorny cane as drupe comes loose. Plants resist impatient reapers. This is why machine-harvested produce will never be as good as that gathered on an idle amble by a sentient being.

The sweetest tastes come from the softest touch. A single finger caress. A gentle twist. Maybe growing the crop took hours of digging and seeding, waiting and weeding, but the best pick lasts an instant, and the fruit of your labor sites in your hand, ready to be eaten and enjoyed, prepared or shared.