A harvest-timing guide for US home gardens

When to Harvest Potatoes — and Everything Else in Your Garden

Pick a vegetable a week too early and it is bland and undersized; a week too late and it is woody, split, or bolted. Harvest Times gathers the readiness signs, typical days-to-harvest ranges, picking steps, and storage notes for more than 30 common vegetables, so you can bring in every crop at its peak.

Open the Master Harvest Chart Read the potato guide

Featured vegetables

See all 33 in the chart →

Our most-visited crop pages, each with readiness signs, a step-by-step harvest, and storage notes. Start with the big four: when to harvest potatoes, when to harvest onions, when to harvest garlic, and when to harvest carrots.

How to use this site

1. Check the chart

The Master Harvest Chart lists every vegetable with its ready signs, a typical days-to-harvest range, and how to pick it. Filter by type — roots, fruiting crops, leafy greens, bulbs, brassicas, legumes, herbs — or sort by days to harvest.

2. Read your crop’s page

Each featured vegetable has its own page with the full picture: what ripe looks and feels like, exactly how to get it out of the ground or off the vine without damage, and how long it keeps afterward.

3. Cure and store it right

Potatoes, onions, and garlic keep for months — but only if they are cured first. The Curing & Storage section covers curing steps, root-cellar basics, and which vegetables store well and which do not.

4. Go deeper with the guides

Three long, extension-style guides walk through the most-searched harvests in detail: potatoes, onions and garlic, and carrots and root vegetables.

A note on timing

Every range on this site is a typical range for home gardens in the United States. Actual harvest dates shift with your variety, your USDA hardiness zone, your soil, and the season’s weather. A carrot in Zone 9 Florida and a carrot in Zone 4 Minnesota are on different calendars even if they were planted the same week. Use the day counts to know when to start checking — then trust the readiness signs (size, color, skin set, leaf dieback) over the calendar. The signs never lie; the calendar only estimates.

From the guides

All guides →

Home › Master Harvest Chart

Master Harvest Chart: 33 Vegetables

Every vegetable below with the signs it is ready, a typical days-to-harvest range (counted from sowing or transplanting, as noted on each crop page), and how to pick it. Click a vegetable name for its full page where one exists, use the search box to filter, or click a column heading to sort.

Signs it is ready How to pick / harvest

Ranges, not promises

Days-to-harvest figures are typical ranges gathered from seed packets and university extension guidance for US home gardens. Your variety, USDA zone, soil temperature, and weather can move a harvest a week or more in either direction. When the signs and the calendar disagree, believe the signs. Perennial crops (asparagus) and herbs are picked by size and season rather than a day count, so their ranges describe the harvest window instead.

Home › Guides

Harvest Guides

Long-form, extension-style guides on the harvests gardeners ask about most — written around the searches “when to harvest potatoes,” “when to harvest onions,” “when to harvest garlic,” and “when to harvest carrots,” with curing and storage covered end to end.

Short on time?

The Master Harvest Chart gives you the one-line answer for all 33 vegetables, and the Curing & Storage page covers keeping what you pick. The guides below are for when you want the whole story.

Home › Curing & Storage

Curing & Storage: Making the Harvest Last

Harvesting at the right moment only wins you half the battle. The other half is what happens in the first two weeks after picking. Curing — a short period of warm, dry, airy rest — heals cuts, toughens skins, and dries outer layers so that potatoes, onions, and garlic can keep for months instead of weeks. Skip it, and even a perfectly timed harvest rots in the bin. This page covers curing for the three big storage crops, root-cellar basics for everything else, and an honest list of what stores well and what simply does not.

How to cure potatoes

Freshly dug potatoes have thin, easily scuffed skins and small nicks from the fork. Curing lets those wounds heal over and the skin set firm, which is what makes long storage possible.

  1. Brush, don’t wash. Let dug potatoes dry on the soil for an hour or two on a dry day, then brush off loose dirt with your hand. Washing shortens storage life; wash right before cooking instead.
  2. Sort hard. Set aside any cut, green, soft, or fork-damaged tubers to eat within a week or two. One rotting potato spreads to its neighbors, so only flawless potatoes go into storage.
  3. Cure 10–14 days. Spread potatoes in a single layer in a dark, humid, well-ventilated spot at 50–60°F — a garage, shaded porch, or barn floor covered with burlap works. Keep them out of light the whole time; light turns skins green and bitter.
  4. Store cool and dark. After curing, move potatoes to 38–45°F, dark, and humid (a root cellar, unheated basement corner, or insulated box). At those temperatures, most varieties keep 4–8 months. Never store near onions — onion gases encourage potato sprouting.

See the full potato timing in When to Harvest Potatoes and the long-form potato guide.

How to cure onions

An uncured onion has a thick, juicy neck that invites rot straight down into the bulb. Curing dries that neck shut and rustles the outer skins into a protective paper wrapper.

  1. Lift on a dry day once most tops have fallen over (see when to harvest onions for the full signs).
  2. Dry in the field if weather allows. In dry climates, lay onions on the soil with the tops of one row shading the bulbs of the next, for 2–3 days. In humid or rainy weather, skip straight to sheltered curing.
  3. Cure 2–4 weeks in a warm (75–85°F), dry, airy place — a covered porch, greenhouse bench, or garage with a fan. Spread bulbs in a single layer on mesh or slats so air reaches every side.
  4. Finish and store. When necks are completely dry and tight and skins rustle, clip tops to about an inch (or braid them). Store at 32–40°F, dry, in mesh bags or braided strings. Sweet onion types keep only 1–3 months; firm storage types can last 6–8 months.

How to cure garlic

Garlic is cured whole, tops and roots on, so the bulb can draw the last energy down from the leaves while its wrappers dry into paper.

  1. Dig, don’t pull, when about half the leaves have yellowed or browned (details on the garlic page).
  2. Cure 3–4 weeks in a shaded, breezy, rain-free spot at roughly 70–80°F — hang in small bundles, or lay on screens. Direct sun can sunscald and “cook” the bulbs, so shade is non-negotiable.
  3. Clean and trim. Once wrappers are papery and roots are wiry-dry, brush off soil, trim roots to about half an inch, and either braid softneck garlic or cut hardneck stems to an inch or two.
  4. Store at 60–65°F with moving air, in mesh bags or braids. Garlic keeps 6–8 months at cool room temperature; avoid the refrigerator, which triggers sprouting, and never seal it in plastic.

The combined timing and curing story is in the guide: When to Harvest Onions and Garlic — and How to Cure Them.

Root-cellar basics

A root cellar is simply any space that stays cold, dark, and humid without freezing. Few homes have a true cellar, but the same conditions can be improvised:

  • Temperature: 32–40°F is the sweet spot for most root vegetables. Below freezing damages tissue; above 45°F invites sprouting and shriveling.
  • Humidity: roots want 85–95% humidity so they don’t dry out — the opposite of onions and garlic, which want it dry. That is why the two groups should never share a bin.
  • Darkness: light greens potatoes and triggers sprouting in many roots.
  • Airflow: gentle air movement prevents mold pockets; sealed plastic is the enemy of almost everything on this page.

Modern stand-ins that work well: an unheated garage or basement corner, a buried cooler or clamp in the garden, a second refrigerator set warm, or — the oldest trick of all — leaving hardy roots like carrots and parsnips in the ground under a thick mulch blanket and digging them as needed through winter in zones where the soil doesn’t freeze solid.

What stores well — and what doesn’t

Keeps for months

Potatoes (4–8 months, cured, 38–45°F) · Onions (storage types 6–8 months, cured, cool and dry) · Garlic (6–8 months, cured, 60–65°F) · Winter squash & pumpkins (2–6 months, cured rind, 50–55°F) · Carrots, beets, parsnips, turnips (2–5 months, near 32°F and humid, or in damp sand) · Cabbage (3–4 months, cold and humid).

Eat within days or weeks

Lettuce, spinach, and herbs (days — refrigerate and use fast) · Sweet corn (sugars turn to starch within hours; same day is best) · Peas and green beans (under a week refrigerated) · Cucumbers and zucchini (1–2 weeks) · Tomatoes (1–2 weeks on the counter, never fully ripe in the fridge) · Sweet potatoes (the exception — cured, they keep for months at 55–60°F, but chill damage ruins them below 50°F).

For roots specifically — sand storage, refrigerator crisper method, and in-ground mulching — see the guide When to Harvest Carrots and Other Root Vegetables — and How to Store Them.

Home › About

About Harvest Times

Harvest Times is a small, focused reference site for US home gardeners, built around one deceptively simple question: is it ready yet? It began with the search gardeners type more than almost any other — “when to harvest potatoes” — and grew into a chart and set of guides covering the whole vegetable garden, from asparagus in spring to the last winter squash before frost.

What you’ll find here

How we handle timing

Gardening advice is full of false precision. A seed packet may say “70 days,” but that count assumes a particular climate, and a garden in Georgia and a garden in Oregon rarely agree. Every figure on this site is therefore a range, drawn from common seed-packet data and the style of guidance published by university extension services, and every page pairs the numbers with the physical signs — skin set, leaf dieback, shoulder size, silk color — that actually tell you a crop is ready. Timing also varies by variety and USDA zone, and we say so wherever it matters.

Who this is for

Backyard and community gardeners in the United States, whether it’s your first raised bed or your fortieth season. If something here saved a crop — or if you spot an error — we’d genuinely like to hear it via the contact page.

Home › Contact

Contact Harvest Times

Questions about harvest timing, a correction to one of our ranges, or a vegetable you’d like added to the chart? The fastest way to reach us is email:

hello@harvesttimes.pages.dev

What to include

  • For timing questions: your USDA zone (or state), the variety name if you know it, and when you planted. Harvest answers are meaningless without those three things.
  • For corrections: the page name and the figure or sign you believe is wrong. We check corrections against extension-style sources before changing anything.
  • For requests: tell us which vegetable or guide you want next. The most-requested topics become future pages.

We read everything, though as a small site we can’t promise a personal reply to every message. Please don’t send photos of plants for disease diagnosis — your local extension office or Master Gardener helpline will do a far better job of that than we can by email.

Home › Privacy Policy

Privacy Policy

Last updated: November 2026. This policy explains what information Harvest Times (harvesttimes.pages.dev) collects when you visit, how it is used, and the choices you have. We keep this simple because the site itself is simple: it is a static reference site with no accounts, no comments, and no forms that store your information.

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