Timely harvest means delectable flavor

All fruits have ways of signaling when they are ripe; they must be harvested at the right moment if they are to taste their best. Not every fruit can be picked under-ripe to ripen indoors. Softening does occur, but such softening in many cases is really the first stage of rotting rather than ripening.

With most fruits, color is the most obvious change that occurs with ripening. Fruit must be fully colored before harvest. All red apples do not necessarily turn red when ripe because direct light is needed for this color change. Shaded apples show their ripeness when their background color makes the subtle change to a greenish or creamy yellow. Conversely, even shaded grape, blueberry, plum and raspberry fruits turn color as they ripen.

Once color seems right, test how firmly a fruit is attached to the plant. Waiting for a fruit to fall is not a practical way to harvest most fruits, and often occurs when fruit is passed its prime. The way to harvest most tree fruits is to cup a fruit in the palm of your hand, then give the fruit a slight twist around, then up. If the fruit is ripe, the stem will part readily from the branch. Never harvest so that the stem pulls out of the fruit.

Waiting until the fruit comes easily off the plant is especially important when harvesting berries. Blueberries, for example, color up days before the fruits are truly ripe. To separate the blue, ripe blueberries from the blue, unripe blueberries, tickle the clusters so that only the ripe fruits fall off. Blackberries remain quite puckery until they are so soft that they stain your fingers, even as the fruits readily come off the plant.

Grapes are a different story since whole clusters, not individual fruits, are harvested at once. Know when a cluster is ready by tasting a berry.

A few kinds of fruits can or must be picked under-ripe, then ripened indoors. Pears, except for Seckel pears and Asian pears, turn mushy and brown if allowed to fully ripen on the tree, so must be picked under-ripe. Some late apples, such as Idared, also ripen well in storage, improving in flavor. Other fruits that ripen well off the plants include avocado, banana, and persimmon. Note that all these fruits that ripen indoors should not be picked until they attain a certain degree of maturity on the plant, indicated usually by a slight change in color.