Dr Abe V Rotor
Living with Nature School on Blog
Paaralang Bayan sa Himpapawid with Ms Melly C
Tenorio
738 DZRB AM Band, 8 to 9 evening class,
Monday to Friday
Fruits and vegetables are highly perishable. Here is list of do's and
don'ts in harvesting, in order to reduce loss and enhance quality.
1. Fruits like mango, avocado, chico, caimito and guava should be harvested with a picking pole with a catching bag.
2. Harvest pechay, mustard, lettuce, cauliflower, with sharp knife close
to the root and trim at the same time. Uprooting is tedious and may predispose
the harvest to early deterioration.
3. Harvest green corn, melon, pineapple and the like, in the morning, they are sweeter. They have lower sugar content in the afternoon.
4. Avoid harvesting leafy vegetables early in the morning, they are brittle, and easily break and rot. Allow them to get supple and the dewdrops to evaporate.
5. Harvest root and tuber crops (e.g. radish, carrot) when they are large enough or at marketable size. When over mature the pith is hard and even dry.
6. Harvest onions, garlic and potato when the top begins to dry out, spreads out and topple.
7. Do not let yam (sinkamas) and ginger to over stay in the field, otherwise they become trough and fibrous.
8. Harvest lettuce, pechay and mustard before they flower.
9. For cabbage, the head is well formed, if cracked it is over mature. Cauliflower head well formed, clean white or cream.
10. Harvest papaya, as soon as 10 to 15 percent of the fruit's surface is yellow to yellow orange.
11. Pineapple is ready for harvest when the "eyes" are filled, and the base of the fruit becomes yellow advancing upward.
12. Apply the simple thumbnail test on the following:
- Sweetcorn
exudes milky sap
- Okra
snaps easily at the tip
- Upo,
patola, cucumber easily give way and exude sap
- Cowpea,
sitao, batao, sigarillas snap easily
- Squash
when fully mature does not give way
- Chico,
sampalok - scrape lightly, immature if green
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