Tips on harvesting your bountiful vegetable crop.

Cucumbers and squash

For best taste, harvest cucumbers and squash before they get big and fat. Big cucumbers are mushy and seedy and big squash are dry and seedy.

How do you tell when a cantaloupe is ripe? According to Andre, they are ready to pick when:

• The color changes from green to buff,
• The netting becomes more pronounced,
• The stem of the melon is completely dry and slips from the melon

How about watermelons? Andre says pick when:

• The pigtail tendril withers
• When you thump the watermelon, it should have a dull, hollow sound and not a sharp, high-pitched sound.

Grow the biggest pumpkins!

• Dig a big, deep hole and prepare it well with Plant-tone, rock phosphate, and green sand.
• Avoid the use of high nitrogen, chemical fertilizers.
• Mound the area and plant 5-6 pumpkin seeds about 6" apart.
• Thin to 3 plants after germination
• Leave only 1 - 2 pumpkins on each vine. Remove any extra fruit that develops.
• Do not trim the vine or leaves since each leaf on the vine is responsible for up to 4 pounds of weight.