How to buy produce

Most people know a good apple from the rotten one.  But what about a pineapple?  How do you tell when any vegetable is ripe, or when it is so green it will never fully ripen, or when it's just a little too ripe.

Eating produce when it is perfectly ripe dramatically increases succulence,  flavor, digestibility, and nutrition.

Fruits ripen naturally on the branch or vine, at some point achieving their optimum levels of sugar, liquid and fiber. Vegetables reach their peak relatively young, usually before the flowering or seed stage.  Your job as a consumer, or as a grower, is to deliver or consume both in their most pristine and voluptuous state.

Too often, fruits are picked very green; ensuring they will not rot in shipment.  Problem is, these will never achieve the optimum chemical and physiological balance for human consumption.

Basic principles:

• Buy produce which is "in" season.
• Buy locally grown produce whenever possible, but remember that roadside stands are poorly regulated: buy organic or wash well.
• Don't buy more than you'll eat in a week; shop daily if convenient.
• Buy what "looks good;" try not to go to the produce mart with a list.
• Smell is an important ingredient in taste.
• Look for produce which is average in size and shape; humongous or grotesque produce rarely tastes as good as it looks.  That's not to say a fruit must be cosmetically perfect; far from it.  Symmetry and beauty do not necessarily equate with great taste.

Greens

In California, farmers plant greens in the late winter for a spring harvest, and again in the early fall, for an early winter harvest.  In coastal climates, greens may be grown year-round.  In cold climates, they are summer crops.

Often, the flower of a green plant is prized, like a broccoli or cauliflower.  Sometimes we eat an enlarged stem, like celery or kohlrabi.  Sometimes the top of the plant is consumed, like a cabbage, or only the leaf, like collards, kale or mustard.

Sometimes the whole dang plant is consumed, like lettuce or a bok choy.

Whatever the case, once the plant begins flowering, the taste becomes bitter.  A fully flowered lettuce or bok choy is much more bitter than the same plant, a week before it bolted.

Signs of flowering--such as longer internodal (in between sets of leaves) lengths, or "opening up," of the flower head, mark the point when the plant's flavor begins to diminish, as the plant puts its energy toward making seeds.

Hints

• The best heads of lettuce are tightly closed, but relatively firm to the squeeze. An immature head of lettuce feels like a puff of air when squeezed... because it mostly is.
• The best broccoli or cauliflower has tightly packed flower heads, firm stems, and no sign of yellow or brown.
• Cabbage heads start to open up when they are left on the plant too long.  Same for Brussels sprouts.
• Lettuce grows fast and has fewer pests than spinach, mustard-like plants, or cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, kale, etc).  Hence, it needs fewer pesticides.  Romaine is particularly hardy.
• Spinach is among the most pesticide-laden greens.  Buy organic.

Again, this table is for the Western United States.  Invert or adjust as needed.  This is a shopper's guide, NOT a planting chart.

Tree Fruits

Tree fruits generally ripen in the summer; in the Northern Hemisphere they can start as early as May for small fruits like cherries or small peaches and apricots, if it is a warm year.  The exceptions are citrus: which ripens starting around New Years', in most temperate climates; year-round in others.  Other oddballs are persimmons--in late fall--and avocados--in early spring. Please contact me if you have information about tropical tree fruits.

For the approximate ripening order of temperate fruits, see the chart below.  If you are looking for grapes, kiwis, berries or melons, see the vine fruit chart.

Hints

• If you can't smell it, you probably won't taste it.  Fruit should smell good.
• Apples and some persimmons are two of the few fruits which are best when eaten very firm.  
• Pears are best when the stem pulls from the fruit with a resounding, wet pop.
• Apricots, peaches and nectarines should be soft, yet supple.
• Cherry season usually lasts only a few weeks, a month at best.
• Citrus can be stored un-refrigerated until the skin is pliable; they are sweetest then.
• Many tree fruits are heavily sprayed.  Buy organic.

Citrus and apples store the best.  Pears store well.  Best to eat apricots, cherries, nectarines and peaches right after picking.

Bananas are sweetest, and easiest to digest, when turning brown.  At this time, starches are converted into highly digestible grape sugars.

"Soft" persimmons should be eaten when at a custard-like consistency.

This chart is most accurate for the Western United States.  Adjust accordingly, reverse for Southern Hemisphere, and factor in warm/cool years.

Vine fruits and vegetables

Vine fruits are summer fruits.  Very rarely do they appear in spring, unless grown in a greenhouse. Their relatively thick rinds make them suitable for longer transport.

Vines tend to be heavily sprayed with pesticides, buy organic.

Hints:

• If you can't smell it, you won't taste it. 
• Baseball-like hardness generally indicates immaturity
• Ripe melons are pliable around the blossom end (opposite the stem)
• Vine veggies like peas, green beans, cucumbers or squash are best when very young.
• The ideal zucchini squash or cucumber is of moderate, uniform diameter, like a sausage.
• Pumpkins and winter squash left on the vine until the plant is dead and the shell is hard will keep all winter long.
• The sugar content of grapes continues increasing until they are raisins.
• The peas in snow peas, or the beans in green beans, should be barely perceptible, or not visible at all.
• Pear-shaped tomatoes are better for cooking than for eating.
• The walls of chilies and peppers thicken and get sweeter--or hotter--as they get older.
• Green peppers are immature.  Nearly all peppers turn some other color when fully ripe: anything from white to chocolate brown.  Reds, oranges and yellows seem to be the sweetest.
• Pull a few spikes out of the top of a pineapple to see if it is ripe.  If they won't budge, it's still too green.  If the pineapple appears brown or has a lot of sugar crystals on its outside; it may be rotten.
• Strawberries are the most heavily sprayed fruit or vegetable.  Buy organic, or wash well before eating.
• Avoid washing berries until you are ready to eat them; they mold easily.
• Potatoes should be firm but not green.  Cut off any green portion of a potato.

• Bananas may be eaten year round.  I like mine with no green and lots of brown spots.  The starch in a green banana converts to sugar during ripening.

Roots

Root crops are generally cold weather crops, except for those parts of the world where cold means a foot or more of snow on the ground.  Once germinated, root crops are fairly hard in cold climates.  They bolt (go to seed) quickly when temperatures go up or when watering stops.

The best root vegetables grow fast.  Roots tend to need less pesticides, but because they are in the ground, but are easily contaminated.

• Unlike fruits, roots should be very firm to the touch.
• A very hairy root is generally an overgrown root.
• Overgrown roots tend to have thick, woody skin and dry, styrofoam-like interiors.
• A potato is a tuber, not a root. (See vining plants)
• Select onions and garlic with many layers of intact skin.

Again, this table is for the Western United States.  Invert or adjust as needed.  This is NOT a planting chart.

Send us your produce-picking tips! Help us out with missing produce!

Additions from the Sustainable Enterprises community:

• "Always smell the melon before buying one. Especially honeydew and other sweet yellow melons. They should smell as they should taste so that way you won't buy an unripe melon."