Harvest Smarts – Squash, Pumpkin + Kumara

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Please be patient my gardening friends! Don’t rush to harvest your squash and pumpkins. For sure, they look ready on the outside – but until the stalk dries off, there’s still work to be done on the inside. Let it finish, and be rewarded with deeper, richer flesh.

The Quest For Sweet Squash and Pumpkins

queensland blue

While you wait for the stalk to dry, keep your crop clear of weeds or plants that are blocking light and holding the moisture in. Then check underneath and if they’ve got wet bottoms, give them a turn or put some dry stuff beneath – rot is a tragedy we can easily avoid.

During this final, stage of maturity, the green rind beneath the skin turns yellow/ orange, the seeds ripen, the skin hardens and the flesh turns a deeper hue of orange. For the full expression you must wait till it’s done.

pumpkin harvest

When the stalks are dry, harvest them cutting where the stalk meets what’s left of the vine. The stalk is key to storage – like a cork in a wine bottle, it’s sealing all the goodness in and keeping air and moisture out.

To go the full hog and develop the flesh to it’s sweet potential, cure your picked fruits for 3 or 4 weeks on a slatted surface, somewhere dry, away from direct sunlightand airy.

When To Harvest Kumara

A wheelbarrow full on the delicious New Zealand sweet potato, known as Kumara

Growing kumara in our less than ideal conditions of heavy clay soils and high rainfall, has taught me to get the tubers up as soon as they are ready. Somewhere in the realm of 120 – 150 days from planting, is when I harvest. Feel around in the soil and once the tubers are a good size – call it. Eschew common advice to wait till the tops yellow and die – you’ll be waiting for winter whereby the tubers will be blemished, and not store very well or worse going mushy.

Cold soil and kumara are not friends. So as soon as the tubers have sized up + a dry day dawns = get the kumara out of the ground and curing.