Why It's Important to Harvest Regularly From Your Garden in July

Harvesting is one of the most important jobs you can do in your garden to keep all of your plants happy and growing to their fullest potential. So, grab your pruners and your favorite harvest basket, and let’s go reap all the delicious goodness our gardens can grow in July. 

Harvest to Stimulate New Growth

With leafy greens like Swiss chard and kale, it’s especially important to take stems or leaves from the outside of the plant to encourage more growth. The more you cut from your plants, the more you stimulate new leaf development, plus you give them increased access to air flow, sunlight, and nutrients. 

I’d make a practice of coming out to your garden at least weekly to get some greens. Harvest no more than a third of the plant at one time to ensure it has enough leaves to keep growing. 

Similarly, you also want to harvest from fruiting plants regularly. Take my shishito pepper plant: If I were to let a mama pepper grow for too long, I’d discourage the plant from producing new baby peppers. I generally take fruits once they look big enough to eat to focus the plant’s energy on new fruit. 

Harvest to Relieve Pressure on the Plant

Snip off any leaves that don’t look great (these, it might go without saying, won’t be for eating). Again, that will direct the plant to focus its energy on forming new leaves. 

Cutting leaves is a great way to remove pests and infestations from the garden. Harvesting means you’re cutting off their easy access to the buffet line, so to speak. 

Harvest to Give Plants the Space They Need

If you use my intensive planting method, harvesting gives you a chance to clean up your beds and make sure you're giving each plant the space it needs to grow to its fullest ability. If you watch my videos on YouTube, you know that my kale had been shading my tomatoes, a good reminder that cutting regularly from leaves really helps out their neighboring plants. Now that my tomatoes have more vital resources, they’re finally fruiting.  

FYI: I aim to harvest my tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers with pruners to avoid breaking the branches with my hands and harming my plants.

I recently harvested just my front two beds (so 30 square feet of gardening space) and came away with a basket full of Swiss chard, kale, cutting celery, peppers, cherry tomatoes, sun gold tomatoes, parsley, and my first little eggplant! You can grow so much in a small space. 

Whenever my harvest basket is filled with amazing things I can eat, I always want to share it with others; gardening, I’d say, is best with a community. If you’re looking for your gardening community, I encourage you to explore our new membership program, Gardenary 365. We want to help you build garden-centered habits that improve your daily life in simple ways, surrounded by a supportive and knowledgeable community. Cheers to harvesting and finding your community of kitchen gardeners!