Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

I notice a few people tend to grow their veggies to a massive size before harvesting them. Is their a reason?

I prefer mine to be young and sweet. I haven't been tempted to do micro herbs yet though but used to use micro herbs a lot in commercial kitchens I have worked in.

Am I just seeing pictures of the extra ordinary plants that have just been allowed to grow or are people trying to grow big for more "bang for their buck"?

The plants tend to perform better in AP. But there are someplants you don't get the choice. Your tomato plant may take over but the tomatoes will range in size.

I can see that the plants are heaps better in AP but I see also that a few people are picking them later.

I can understand waiting for a tomato to ripen so the tomato may become large in that time but a giant bok choy or similar? Would it not be more sweet and tender at a smaller size?

I am just curious.

Not sure. I plant and forget a lot of the time. Then its a guessing game to work out what they are first. But a lot of plants would be better harvested while young. Pulled out a lot of beetroot today cos of that very reason.

I wondered if people just forgot about things...

Embi - most of my stuff is harvested as soon as possible
We have started harvesting carrots even though they are tiny.
Bok choi and those type get hammered from about week 6.

I harvest young, it's just sometime you plant more than you need, and can't keep up.
Other times it's not performing, so you give it a chance, and then it gets big without you noticing.
Fits and spurts, that's may garden for you.
Also we tend to show off the really big stuff, but not the small. So it seems like there's a lot more.

Hey that s about right Kuda...
Could it be the moon entering a new moon phase every month?

Gemination, frame, fruit/flower, seed set, die

C1 I tried, I had faith... and I noticed something.

You may be right, but it seems not to matter when I sow seeds, they still come up at the same time, with the moon [fact not independently verified ], so knowing the calendar is handy, but only to tell the future, I'm too lazy to plant by it, I plant when I get to it, in the heat of a summer's day if that's when I have time

I even ordered one of those moon guides. So as long as I look at it I'll be right.

Plants in ap do so well you can plant closer If we ate all the greens we produce we would grow fur and have a little white tail [ thinking rabbits do one thing well Thinking more to old ]

One of the tricks my pairs used on me as kid to get me to eat my carrots was to say "they help you to see in the dark". F&F, it all makes sense now

I'm hopeless at harvesting in general, unless something changes colour, I really don't know when I should be picking things.

I also went away at about the time I should have been picking some stuff, and came back 2 months later.

Carrots do improve your eyesight.
The Brits sort of immemorialised that, and exaggerated it, with spin in order to cover the use of radar in the war.
They said they had their pilots on a 'diet of carrots' to help them see better in the dark, and that's why they could seek out the enemy planes so well.