Hello sustainable growers! Today I would like to show you a good trick to harvest your crop without losing the whole plant. In agriculture the plants such as lettuce are picked when they reach their “adult size”. In aquaponics we have access to our garden whenever we want so we can allow ourselves a special veggies harvest technique… Leafy plants such as spinach, lettuce, silver-beet, cabbage… are constantly growing new leaves from the centre while the old leaves on the side are slowly wilting. As we grow our plants in our backyard we can easily harvest the oldest leaves every day before they wilt and preserve the young leaves. This technique allows you to extend the life of your plants and therefore to significantly increase the production per plant. It will decrease the need of planting new seedlings and ensure a continuous sustainable production. By picking the oldest leaves you make your whole system more self-sufficient.

Some other plants such as meant are more “Invasive” and will colonize your whole growbed if you use this same technique. For the strong invasive plants you will have to harvest the whole plant with the roots and leave only a very small part. You want to manage those and avoid them to take over the other species.

Apply the most adapted technique in function of the particularity of the species you are growing 🙂
