When vegetables approach maturity, choose the best moment for picking them. For flavour, sweetness, and quantity too, because regular picking can help your vegetables keep producing.
Melons and tomatoes take what feels an age to mature, then ripen very quickly, according to variety. Cherry tomatoes take longer than beef tomatoes. Watermelons need more time to mature than Charentais melons, and need warmth.
In fact, we have enjoyed a warmer spring and early summer than normal, so harvests have come ready before I was expecting them.
There are many options for sweetcorn harvests. This is Goldcrest F1, a supersweet variety. Sown 10th April and planted 25th, with fleece over.
Onions are more abundant than normal because of high sunshine levels, and a lack of rain. Outside I am watering cucumbers, celery and sweetcorn much more than usual. Especially the celery.
Filmed at Homeacres no dig garden by Nicola Smith, on 21st July 2026.
Red spider mite biological control https://gardening-naturally.com/products/phytoseiulus?tw_source=google&tw_adid=&tw_campaign=17653985753&tw_kwdid=&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=20961670974&gbraid=0AAAAAD9ZOgwgq6GppPJ2bjmxchWneQ0o7&gclid=Cj0KCQjw94bTBhDQARIsAN3vv0yGLgEOSzvAfCq6K8jpcWHjgqJB1d3EFbCgA4dWnc3M1bjj0_ccR8EaAiA8EALw_wcB
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00:00 Introduction
00:21 Melons in the greenhouse - ripe and unripe, signs of readiness
01:30 Cutting one open, Alvaro F1
02:27 Red spider mite predator, see link above
02:47 Different varieties - Emir F1 and Ogen
03:48 Beef tomatoes - removing at breaking stage, to finish ripening off the plant
04:42 Cherry tomatoes, Sungold F1 - signs of ripeness
05:25 Polytunnel - tomatoes and watermelon, indications of readiness
06:36 More melons Alvaro, Emir and Ogen
06:56 Long cucumbers - when to pick
07:36 Outdoor ridge cucumbers La Diva - signs of readiness
09:11 Sweetcorn - clues to ripeness, and growing in a block
11:43 Potatoes Désirée, maincrop - difference between potato categories
12:17 Harvesting no dig potatoes, proximity to sunflowers
13:24 Green leaves on potato plants, and spacing
13:45 Multisown beetroot - spacing, and removing one from a clump, two varieties
15:30 Celery Tango - when and how to harvest
16:33 Red onions Red Baron - multisown and grown from seed, how to harvest
18:03 Onion Long Red Florence / Tropea long,, also multisown
Melons and tomatoes take what feels an age to mature, then ripen very quickly, according to variety. Cherry tomatoes take longer than beef tomatoes. Watermelons need more time to mature than Charentais melons, and need warmth.
In fact, we have enjoyed a warmer spring and early summer than normal, so harvests have come ready before I was expecting them.
There are many options for sweetcorn harvests. This is Goldcrest F1, a supersweet variety. Sown 10th April and planted 25th, with fleece over.
Onions are more abundant than normal because of high sunshine levels, and a lack of rain. Outside I am watering cucumbers, celery and sweetcorn much more than usual. Especially the celery.
Filmed at Homeacres no dig garden by Nicola Smith, on 21st July 2026.
Red spider mite biological control https://gardening-naturally.com/products/phytoseiulus?tw_source=google&tw_adid=&tw_campaign=17653985753&tw_kwdid=&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=20961670974&gbraid=0AAAAAD9ZOgwgq6GppPJ2bjmxchWneQ0o7&gclid=Cj0KCQjw94bTBhDQARIsAN3vv0yGLgEOSzvAfCq6K8jpcWHjgqJB1d3EFbCgA4dWnc3M1bjj0_ccR8EaAiA8EALw_wcB
You can join this channel by paying a monthly fee, to support our work with helping gardeners grow better, and to receive monthly videos made only for members:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB1J6siDdmhwah7q0O2WJBg/join
#harvestvegetables #vegetablegardening #nodig #growyourown #homegrownfood
00:00 Introduction
00:21 Melons in the greenhouse - ripe and unripe, signs of readiness
01:30 Cutting one open, Alvaro F1
02:27 Red spider mite predator, see link above
02:47 Different varieties - Emir F1 and Ogen
03:48 Beef tomatoes - removing at breaking stage, to finish ripening off the plant
04:42 Cherry tomatoes, Sungold F1 - signs of ripeness
05:25 Polytunnel - tomatoes and watermelon, indications of readiness
06:36 More melons Alvaro, Emir and Ogen
06:56 Long cucumbers - when to pick
07:36 Outdoor ridge cucumbers La Diva - signs of readiness
09:11 Sweetcorn - clues to ripeness, and growing in a block
11:43 Potatoes Désirée, maincrop - difference between potato categories
12:17 Harvesting no dig potatoes, proximity to sunflowers
13:24 Green leaves on potato plants, and spacing
13:45 Multisown beetroot - spacing, and removing one from a clump, two varieties
15:30 Celery Tango - when and how to harvest
16:33 Red onions Red Baron - multisown and grown from seed, how to harvest
18:03 Onion Long Red Florence / Tropea long,, also multisown
Category
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00How do you know it's ready?
00:02It's an exciting time of harvest and I want to guide you with a few ideas of fruits and roots
00:08and
00:09judging their best time to pick them like melons and
00:13tomatoes we're going to look at cucumbers and
00:16also some beetroot and some sweet corn and potatoes.
00:20So these melons here, wow!
00:24You can see quite nicely the difference between an unripe melon
00:29Which is still green. That's the color. It's been since it formed about three four weeks ago and
00:35A right one and in fact I've been watching this one. First of all, this one went right about three
00:40or four days ago
00:41Then this one two days ago on that yellowness has all happened today
00:46Compared it was like that this morning and now it's that this afternoon
00:51It's a warm day. It's probably 34 degrees in here
00:5427 degrees outside. So that's an indication that you
00:58Want to be ready to harvest them and you notice they're not supported by anything
01:04And they only fall down if you leave them on for too long, which means they're really ripe
01:10And hopefully with a sharp knife you can cut like that
01:14And also looking at this you can see the
01:18Cracking around the stalk that's another sign of readiness as well as the change of color
01:23And more than anything the biggest clue
01:26Is this amazing aroma. You'd get it as soon as you walk in the greenhouse at the moment, so
01:32We could just have a quick look at this one and see what it's like inside and then I
01:36I want to show you one or two other melons and how different they are
01:40This will be orange. I hope because it's a Charentae
01:44And their flesh normally is orange
01:48And it's a variety called Alvaro
01:52Wow, look at that. I am just going to taste it. I can't resist it
01:57And I sowed it on the 28th of March
02:00Planted in here early May
02:03Just before quite cold weather
02:10It's delicious as you'd expect and helped also by
02:14The leaves are still green. Sometimes melons the leaves can go off before the fruit ripen or while they're ripening
02:21And that takes away from the flavor because they're not
02:24Photosynthesizing enough to bring in more sugar
02:27And it's been helped in here by I use some red spider mite predator because that can really damage the
02:33leaves
02:34Late June and early July. We're now the 21st of July actually. So, you know, this is actually the greenest
02:40I've had so
02:42Check out the link for buying those spider mites in the video description
02:47This is a different variety called Emia and again, you can see it's cracking
02:52And a lovely aroma as well. So
02:55I really feel when you see that
02:59It's risky to leave it too much longer. I want to keep the stalks actually
03:03I will be selling these to the three horseshoes pub and
03:07They will keep much better if you manage to keep the stalk on, you know, otherwise they will fall on
03:12the ground
03:13I'm gonna place it gently on the ground. I'll collect it later
03:18And then here we have a different melon which is ogan
03:22And
03:24It has a green flesh and you can see it's quite green as it grows, but this one is just
03:29starting to yellow
03:30again
03:32These go quite slowly though. That could be four or five days before it's really ripe and you can see
03:36the next stage there
03:37I've let quite a few go on the ground as well
03:39And that will go bright yellow probably in about two days and that's that shows it's a good time to
03:44eat it
03:46harvest and eat it
03:48While tomatoes
03:51It's a bit different according to what variety they are
03:54And you can see all different colors here. This is a yellow tomato
03:58That's definitely ready to harvest and with beef tomatoes. They don't always snap off easily. Let's just see if that
04:05one does
04:06I know so what I want to do is keep the stalk on
04:10the calyx
04:11So I use a knife to cut the truss and that's that could
04:17This could carry on ripening off the plant. It's it's actually ready now, but you can harvest
04:23tomatoes when they're
04:25breaking stage it's called
04:28I'm not seeing any here actually there is one just there
04:31And this is a sort of yellow orange oxide which is just starting to ripen. You could harvest that now
04:36and it will ripen off the plant
04:38The loss of flavor from doing that is actually quite small
04:42And whereas with cherry tomatoes
04:44They definitely benefit like these sungold from leaving them on the plant until they're fully colored
04:49So these are ready now. Aren't they gorgeous?
04:53And these I was looking at just before we filmed and this one actually fell off when I touched it
04:58So that was an indication of ripeness and how these ones do snap off like that
05:04And also this cracking around here
05:07It's nothing to worry about it. It doesn't bother me anyway, and they're still really good to eat
05:11This is another sign of ripeness
05:14And I've got a trug somewhere which I'm going to add these to
05:19And then we're going to go outside and we'll look at watermelon
05:25So in the polytunnel you can see wow, there's a lot of tomatoes suddenly ripening. This has all happened very
05:31recently
05:32and
05:33It's an indication of how
05:35Sometimes you're waiting and waiting and then before you know it you have more than you expected
05:41Here that is a watermelon which I've been
05:44noticing only for a few days because watermelons grow
05:50For quite a long time just as plants and no fruit and then suddenly they make fruits like this
05:55And one indication of readiness is just tapping it
06:01Actually that does sound a bit hollow but you're
06:04You're hoping for a real hollow sound
06:07I would say we're not quite there but actually having said that
06:11This little tendril now I'm not seeing this is the tendril
06:15It wants to be more brown than green so that's an indication for me anyway that I'm not going to
06:22pick this one yet
06:24Watermelons are funny things because they kind of have a mind of their own about when they've got a fruit
06:29and
06:31They don't really have that obvious sign of ripeness like melons do
06:36Like these melons here
06:38Fantastic crop of alvaro again on just one plant but you can see how they're all green
06:43And the polytunnel is just not quite so warm as the greenhouse and that's it's nice because it gives me
06:48a succession
06:49More emir here still all green and the ogern so that's fine. No rush on there
06:56While the cucumber
06:58They've been cropping for well over a month now and
07:03You know you've you've got flexibility that's looking good
07:07Um, you could leave that for another day or two or just get bigger
07:11But actually I find it better to pick them at about that stage because that takes the strain off the
07:15plant. That's another factor
07:17If the plant is being asked to swell this cucumber
07:21It doesn't have so much energy to develop new ones as we go up the stem
07:26so
07:27Always have that in mind as well with
07:30Tomatoes too, you know if you leave them on the plant too long
07:33And they're still trying to make a lot of new ones at this time of year
07:36and
07:37We could
07:39Just quickly have a look at outdoor cucumbers just for comparison
07:43Because that's cordon cucumbers
07:47Which are the big ones we grow in england particularly and many people are used to buying cucumbers like that
07:54and they're growing undercover
07:56Vertically whereas these are
07:59more gardening style ridge cucumbers
08:02And there's just two plants here
08:06Of a variety called la diva
08:09and
08:11Are these ready?
08:12Well, I would say yes because not that they're big but they're these plants are still young. They haven't grown
08:19a lot
08:19These these cucumbers are starting to swell around the shoulder
08:23And you see it's getting fat there. So I would cut that one and actually I would cut this one
08:28as well
08:31And another sign is if you see some skin degradation like here
08:37And that's not a problem because with cucumbers you can easily
08:43Take off the skins with a vegetable slicer
08:47I do that. I like it because I i'm not a great fan of cucumber skin, but I really love
08:51the the juicy flesh
08:52I put a bit of salt with them and
08:55Leave it for a few hours and they really sweetened doing that
08:59So all of that is a great harvest from these two little plants which have
09:03Been in the ground for less time than polysum not quite so warm, but now it's really warmed up out
09:08here. They're gonna
09:09Give a lot more harvest yet
09:11And now we'll have a look at sweet corn
09:18So with sweet corn
09:21The tassels need to be changing color
09:24And that that's one clue there's many clues
09:29If you happen to pick one that's not quite ready as in doesn't have a lot of beautiful yellow kernels
09:35on you can still eat it
09:37It's still edible. It just won't be maybe quite so nice
09:40And more like a mini corn you could eat the center of the cob as well
09:46But as well as the hairs going a bit brown
09:49These are not as brown as I was expecting them to be actually and they ripen really fast
09:54You're you're feeling for a bit of swelling and and decent sort of fatness
09:59On these cobs and actually a lot of them are looking ready. There's a big harvest here anytime now i'm
10:06going to pick this one
10:07So i'm just snapping it off like that
10:11And i'm also looking below it at
10:14Is there a second cob and in this case
10:18Not really that's
10:19Kind of a cob but it's not and so i'm actually going to take that plant out now because
10:25It's taking moisture from the other plants. So I remove the plants as soon as i've harvested from them everything
10:31they have
10:32And let's have a look
10:34Yeah, look at that what a beautiful corn
10:37And you can see a really good set
10:40And that is helped by having them
10:42In a block like this. It's not vital. I've grown nice corn in a line. It can be done
10:47But you don't get quite such a full set of kernels because
10:51What happens here is you've got the male pollen dropping off this top bit
10:55And that was probably about a month ago
10:58and
10:59You need a male
11:00Piece of pollen to fall on each of these hairs which go down that each one is connected to the
11:05the sweet corn
11:07So wow, I can't resist just peeling that
11:11Let's see if I can snap off that. No, I can't
11:14But yeah, the this also is a super sweet variety
11:18Which means you know, it's not only a question of
11:21When to harvest it but when to eat it and these super sweet varieties
11:25Stay sweet for much longer than the old-fashioned open pollinated ones
11:29Which is still good to grow for sure
11:31But those are the ones that you need to
11:34Eat as quickly as you can after picking them because the sugars
11:38Reduce whereas this one
11:40They maintain and just on the other side of the sweet corn we have potatoes
11:52These are desire
11:55Which is a main crop
11:58So what does that mean main crop harvest later?
12:02You have categories of earliness with potatoes first early is usually in early to mid june second early early july
12:10Now we're in late july usually in august actually
12:13Main crop if they haven't got potato blight
12:16So this is no dig and
12:19I'm harvesting them just by pulling get my hand around all of the stems
12:25And pull gently upwards and you can see there's the harvest
12:30And
12:31It's not bad
12:33Well, I'm proud of that but it it would have been bigger if we'd had some more rain
12:37We haven't watered these very much. You can see how dry the soil is. It's actually quite dusty
12:42It's also quite close to a sunflower
12:45And some people say sunflowers are allelopathy, which means they don't like other plants or vice versa
12:50But actually it's not that at all. It's just that they take a lot of moisture to grow themselves
12:54But I love some flowers so I'm very happy to put up with a slightly smaller potato harvest
13:01And it's good to compost all of this
13:05The bits you don't eat
13:07Now you can see the potato seed there. So that's the seed that we planted in
13:12April in this case and that's good to compost as well. So all of that can go on the compost
13:17heap
13:18And i'm going to put this in my truck and then we're going to have a look at beetroot
13:24Two more things about the potatoes is one that they're you can see they're still quite green and that's an
13:30indication
13:30They're more growing to be had especially if we can water them
13:34And they are quite close. So we put them in just 18 inches 45 centimeters apart
13:40For potatoes that is quite close especially for main crop
13:43It's a bit the same here actually with beetroot. So
13:46These beetroot are spaced
13:49Multi-sown clumps at not much more than the foot or 30 centimeters apart and they're also quite close to
13:55the celeriac
13:56There so this is really intensive cropping in a small space
13:59And already this year we've had carrots there. They're around a couple of kilos of carrots from a march sowing
14:07They harvested in early june and these little seedling multi-sown clumps went in the ground on the 8th of
14:15june
14:16Which is just 43 days ago and so in not much more than seven weeks they've done all that
14:22and
14:23It slightly caught me by surprise actually because
14:26What i'm a bit concerned about now is with
14:29As beetroot get bigger they're taking more moisture and nutrients from around them and they will somewhat compromise the growth
14:34of the celeriacs
14:35So what you can do with multi-sown is it's not so much when are they ready?
14:39It's when are you ready to eat them and if you want some you can just do that
14:45twist out a bigger one from a clump
14:48And again, I could do the same there
14:51You can see how easily they come out. This is kyojo which has the beautiful white brings in really sweet
14:56beetroot
14:57And here we have flaming barrel which is more a golden yellow beetroot
15:02Again i'll twist out the bigger one
15:05Like that and then you can see how they are also quite close to dwarf french beans here
15:13So you know i'm juggling a lot of a small space here to get more harvest
15:18Which is very doable but you need to be on it with harvesting
15:23And so there's a lot to eat all the time. It's a really nice
15:26Um problem to have
15:29And behind here there's another vegetable which has quite a variable date of harvest and that's celery
15:38So as long as you keep it watered
15:41Today we didn't get around to watering the celery but celery but normally do
15:45and
15:48It's it's ready when you want it you know this would grow bigger
15:51If you can keep watering uh, even though the spacing is quite close. You can see it's not much more
15:56than nine inches 22 centimeters there
15:59There's a lot of celery here variety called tango
16:02Sown in early april planted early middle of may roughly
16:07And I cut it just below the stalk
16:10There are many ways of doing this, you know, you could
16:13Cut it like that and that you'll get some regrowth
16:16Um, I don't actually want that i'm happy to
16:20Let the celery
16:21um
16:22Just have one harvest like that
16:24All of that is edible and you can use the leaves stalks everything celery is a really good value vegetable
16:30from that point of view
16:33And there's just one more thing I want to show you in this video because today we were
16:38harvesting the red onions finally
16:40red onions tend to come a little bit later than
16:44yellow onions
16:46My yellow onions actually were the
16:50Rose de roscoff which you just got one clump there
16:53and
16:53And that's these ones
16:56And you can see how beautiful rose or pink color they have on the bulb
17:01You can also see how the tops are much more
17:05Dry compared to the red onions red barren here grown from seed multi-sown clumps again
17:11No bolters growing from seed is really reliable
17:14And
17:15They're decent sized bulbs but look how green the leaves still are so with onions
17:20You're not always looking for the leaves to go yellow
17:23But what was happening before we pulled them today?
17:27Probably about
17:28Three quarters of the stalks had stems had fallen already
17:33And we put it like this to
17:36Make sure all the stems so they've been pushed down to really
17:40Make sure there's a tight neck there so you don't want a fat neck for them to store well
17:45When you come to just cut cut the yellow top off so these will stay here for about a week
17:51or 10 days
17:52They're fine in the sun, but it's good to have them pointing down if you can
17:57And they'll be slowly ripening
18:00And then here to finish there's just a very different kind of onion
18:05Which is long red florence or tropea longer
18:08And it's just beautiful. It's not a big one for storing beyond about
18:13November December, but it's it's such a sweet and tasty onion that I love to grow it
18:19And these also were multi-sown and yeah, there weren't many plants there. They've got all of these onions. So
18:25Check out my other videos on multi-sowing and on these other things
18:29It's no dig that really makes life easy because onions can be quite difficult to weed otherwise
18:33And we are going to publish
18:35Quite soon in another video about how to grow all these beautiful vegetables in more detail
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