Knowing how to grow is not everything. One also needs to know how to harvest so as not to compromise, so close to one’s goal, that which is the fruit of so much effort, expense, and care... The diligence with which this work is done is therefore of great importance.
— Abbot François-Xavier Jean, Les champs. Manuel d’agriculture conçu par les professeurs de l’École supérieure d’agriculture de Sainte-Anne-de-la-Pocatière, 1947
HARVEST IS TRULY one of the highlights of the season. This is when all of our efforts and attention to detail get translated into a tangible finished product. As a grower, nothing makes me prouder than harvesting a successful crop. Having said this, harvest requires some special know-how. To ensure quality is maintained all the way from field to fork, certain principles must be understood and followed through.
First of all, it is important to harvest each crop at the right stage of growth. Vegetables harvested before they are fully mature will be much less flavorful; those harvested overripe will have a shorter shelf life. For some crops, it is easy to tell when they are at their freshest, and many can be quite forgiving. But for other crops, harvesting at the opportune moment will make an enormous difference. The timing of cantaloupe picking, for example, will determine whether the fruit is sweet or disappointing. Each vegetable has its own set of signs to watch out for. I have listed the most notable ones we watch for in the crop notes of the appendices. To further complicate things, the right moment to harvest a given vegetable does not necessarily coincide with market demand, and this is one reason why a cold room is indispensable in a market garden. Vegetables such as broccoli, summer squash, and cucumbers, to name just a few, can be harvested at the peak of their quality and stored in the cold room for a few days before being sold.
The other important thing to remember is that vegetables go on “living” even after being picked. They must be cooled to slow their respiration, otherwise their freshness and nutritional value will suffer. This is why it is so important to harvest as early as possible in the morning, before the heat of the day sets in, and to cool the vegetables immediately with cold water and/or air from the cold room.
Post-harvest procedures on our farm are pretty straightforward, since vegetables are not stored for very long. We sell almost all of our vegetables the day after they are harvested. We keep our storage space at about 60°F (15°C), which is cool enough for most vegetables. Those that need to be refrigerated are kept at 36 to 39°F (2°C to 4°C) in the cold room. The basic harvest process is pretty much always the same and can be divided into three steps: collection from the garden, temporary storage and washing, and refrigeration in the cold room. However, there are some exceptions that require special attention.
When incoming crops from the garden are waiting to be washed, it is important that they be pre-refrigerated. Our well-insulated storage area is always about 60°F, which is quite suitable. You can also cool harvested vegetables by covering them with a soaked wool blanket.
LEAF VEGETABLES, including lettuce, are always the first to be harvested and are brought to storage immediately in harvest bins. As soon as they arrive, the leaves are sprayed with cold water to keep them cool until the washing step, which is done later in the day. The washing step involves carefully removing damaged leaves, submerging the vegetables in a cold water bath for a few seconds, and leaving them to drain until they have all been dipped. The vegetables are then gently placed in a closed bin and stored in the cold room.
ROOT VEGETABLES SOLD IN BUNCHES are sorted and bunched in the garden or, in hot weather, brought to the cool storage area in bulk to be bunched. Any damaged leaves are removed during the assembling process, and the bunches are calibrated to ensure uniformity. (The desired number of bunches is determined beforehand and the corresponding number of elastics counted out—e.g., 40 elastics for 40 bunches.) While awaiting their turn at the wash station, the root vegetables are kept in harvest bins and sprayed with cold water so that the tops stay fresh. At the washing stage, any dirt is rinsed off the roots with a pressure hose. The clean bunches are then placed in bins in a staggered fashion. Care is taken not to overload the bins, which are taken to the cold room.
BROCCOLI AND CAULIFLOWER will stay crisp longer if they are cooled immediately after being harvested. As soon as they arrive at the storage area, they are immersed in a cold water bath, drained and taken immediately to the cold room. Since broccoli and cauliflower heads are not picked systematically on harvest day but rather as they reach maturity, it is important to clearly mark the date of harvest on each bin so that they can be distributed in order of freshness.
BEANS AND PEAS do not need to be washed, but if harvested midday, they benefit from being sprayed with cool water before going into the cold room. In this case, you must ensure that they are put in a container that allows the water to drain out properly, in order to prevent rust—especially for beans.
CUCUMBERS will be crunchiest if they are cooled after being harvested from the tunnels. The freshly picked cucumbers are immediately immersed in a cold water bath, drained, and stored in the cold room in a bin marked with the harvest date.
TOMATOES may be harvested at any time of day, but they must always be handled with great care, as damaged tomatoes have a shorter shelf life. To avoid handling them twice, we store tomatoes in the same bins used to harvest them and keep them at the ambient temperature of the storage area.
MESCLUN MIX is often harvested on a different day from the rest of the crops so the entire cutting can be done early in the morning—it can be a very long job! Once harvested, the greens are immersed in a cold water bath and gently swirled to mix up the different sizes and colors. Any weeds, insects, or damaged leaves are removed at this stage. The mix is then spun in an electric spinner to prevent rot and delicately packed into sealed plastic bags, which go into the cold room.
MELONS, like tomatoes, can also be harvested at any time of day. They are usually not refrigerated but instead left to ripen at the ambient temperature of the storage area. If they are harvested too ripe by mistake, however, they are taken to the cold room, even though this reduces their flavor somewhat.
BASIL can be harvested at any time of day, but it must never be harvested wet or kept in a sealed bag, as moisture will turn the leaves black. Basil is stored in the cold room in a half-open bin to prevent condensation.
SUMMER SQUASH is harvested every two or three days when the fruits are still small. The fruits are not washed. They are put in the cold room in bins marked with the harvest date.
SUMMER ONIONS may be harvested any time of day and are often saved for when most of the harvest is finished. They are bunched in the garden, hosed down to remove any soil, and stored in the cold room.
In the mid-1940s, Abbot François-Xavier of La Pocatière used the word “diligence” to explain that harvesting must be done quickly and efficiently. He was right. Harvesting is a task that can drag on and on, and if you spend too much time on some vegetables, others will wilt before they are picked. Drooping vegetables can always be perked up again in very cold water, but part of their quality will be lost. When it comes to harvest, time is of the essence—more so than with any other farming task.
Aside from having extra help, the best way to keep the harvest moving along is for the grower to master harvesting techniques that enable maximum efficiency. Since most harvesting involves small repeated actions, it is important to take the time to study the ergonomic aspects of these movements. By dissecting the minute motions involved in harvest, one can discover how to do the job while minimizing extraneous effort. This requires practice and a certain amount of self-awareness, but taking the time to perfect picking techniques can save hundreds of hours of unnecessary work in the long run.
When harvesting we try to pick as much as possible in one trip. To make sure that the vegetables stay shaded, we installed a removable umbrella on our harvest cart; and we often carry a damp wool cover with us to help keep the vegetables cool.
Harvesting implements can really speed up the harvest. Farm visits are a great way to make such discoveries, but don’t neglect to also use your own imagination. Many pieces of equipment on our farm have been custom-built to fit our exact needs.
Another important aspect of efficient harvesting is to organize the workflow in order to minimize the number of times the vegetables are handled. Finding ways to cut down on trips between the garden and the storage area is especially important. For example, in order to avoid having to fetch more elastic bands in case we miss some, we always carry an extra box in our harvest cart. We do the same with field knives, which are stored in a tool box fixed to the cart. The main thing to remember is that taking care of tiny details now can save huge amounts of time later. I often tell our interns that efficiency is a state of mind that can be reached only by conscious effort.
In our world of market gardening, harvest is the most labor- and time-consuming part of the job. If there is one area where outside help can be useful, this is it. Laborers are often people visiting the farm temporarily, such as enthusiastic CSA members, customers, or travelers who work for a few weeks in exchange for room and board. They can also be part-time employees for the season. For more than a decade, we have welcomed woofers and visitors, and although we like having youthful travelers with us, I will say without hesitation that a paid harvest laborer, with training and experience, is much more profitable, even if volunteers are not paid. Be that as it may, certain measures are necessary in either case.
First and foremost, with inexperienced workers of any kind, never make the mistake of assuming that what is obvious to you is obvious to them. (If you do—be prepared for time wasted or harvest lost.) In my time, I have seen volunteers cut leeks off at the base, and people “harvesting” peas by tearing whole plants out! The stories we could tell.... What we have learned from this is to never leave inexperienced harvest helpers unsupervised. Being by their side all the time is educational for them (this is why we host interns on our farm), but having to explain every step and watch their every move often makes our work more time-consuming and less efficient than it would otherwise be.
With permanent employees or interns who will stay for at least a few weeks, it’s a different story. We then take the time to train these people so that they can work unsupervised, thereafter allowing us to harvest multiple crops at once. But even then, regular check-ins are required to make sure they are doing the job right. Bunch size, which tends to fluctuate over time, is a classic case in point. To try and standardize our working practices, we post clear instructions in bold print in our work spaces to help guide our helpers. This is a simple measure that can make harvesting much more efficient.
As I have already mentioned, a cold room is an invaluable asset for any market gardener. The cold room has three purposes: to cool incoming vegetables from the garden by forced air, to store them for extended periods, and to chill them to a point where they will stay fresh during transport, regardless of the ambient temperature of the delivery vehicle. The type and size of the refrigerated space are very important factors in accomplishing these aims.
Our cold room allows us to harvest the day before delivery. This takes a lot of stress off our backs and saves us from getting up at the crack of dawn on harvest days. However, storing vegetables in cold rooms does require a certain logistical aptitude.
To anyone setting up a cold room, the two best pieces of advice I can give are to invest in a new air compressor with a warranty—refrigerator repair people charge about $100 an hour—and to set up a larger cold room than you think is necessary. It is not overkill to get double the capacity needed for your current level of production. It may seem counterproductive to refrigerate all that space you won’t fill, but it is better not to limit yourself by underestimating your future needs. Also, a generously sized cold room comes with certain advantages that should not be overlooked.
Making a list of crops to harvest in order of priority is a simple way to ensure a smooth harvest.
Firstly, a large cold room with a powerful compressor will be better able to handle the incoming heat from frequent trips in and out at harvest time. The best way to bring the vegetables to their ideal storage temperature is to have a cold room that actually stays cold.
Secondly, having a refrigerated space that is not filled to capacity will allow air to flow more freely—and air circulation plays an important role in cooling vegetables. For this reason, it is a good idea to allow for a four-inch space between stacks of bins.
Lastly, it is much easier to manage the contents of your cold room when you have a large space to work in. Different sections of the cold room can be devoted to specific vegetables, and it is much easier to maneuver a cart full of bins when you have extra space. Our cold room at Les Jardins de la Grelinette measures 8 feet by 16 feet—and it was only in our fifth growing season that we began to occasionally fill it completely.
When it comes to organizing your refrigerated space, choosing the right storage bins for your vegetables is important. This involves shopping around, as there are many different models available. Ideally, storage bins should have the following features:
• They should be the right size: not too small, but not so big that they are too heavy to carry when full of vegetables. It may be a good idea to have three different sizes of bins: one for leaf vegetables, one for root vegetables, and one for fruit vegetables.
• They should have a closable lid to hold in moisture and prevent vegetables from drying out in the cold room.
• They should be nestable and stackable. This means they need to be able to support heavy loads when stacked and be sufficiently robust to last many seasons of intensive use.
• They should be easy to clean and have holes in the bottom to allow wash water to drain out.
So far, we have experimented with various kinds of bins, new and used, and even customized them, but I have found that they all have different features that should be rolled into one product. Alas, the quest for the perfect bin continues. Sometimes we run out of bins, either because we have an especially plentiful harvest on our hands or because we have a lot of vegetables in storage. In this case, we use harvest bins; these do not have lids but significantly limit moisture loss when stacked.
