Tyumen Agronomist Advises Which Vegetables to Harvest

Weather during the gardening season in Tyumen Region has been mixed: some areas saw heavy rain while others faced drought. Under such conditions, plants experience stress. Some vegetables can still be left in the beds, while others are ready to be harvested. Elena Shadrina, an agronomist at the Tyumen branch of the Federal State Budgetary Institution Rosselkhoztsentr (Russian Agricultural Center), explained which crops deserve attention.

Potatoes. If the tops are affected by late blight and have dried out, the tubers must be dug up urgently. Delay risks the complete loss of the harvest. Rainy weather helps wash the spores of the disease-causing agent into the soil and infect the tubers.

Shadrina says the dug-up tubers should be left in a dark place and inspected over the course of a month for damaged roots. Enlarged stomata do not affect the keeping quality of the harvest.

Open-ground tomatoes. They need to be picked and left for a while to ripen.

«Fluctuations in night and day temperatures create moisture on the surface of plants, which helps late blight spread,» explains Elena Shadrina.

Open-ground cucumbers. The agronomist names downy mildew, which affects the leaves of the plants, as the main threat. To extend fruiting, shelters need to be built — film ones. Cucumbers grow at night, so they need to be covered in the evening, when temperatures are higher.

According to Elena Shadrina, vegetables such as cabbage, carrots, daikon, and leafy greens can grow in open ground until the first frost.

«Cabbage loses its bitterness after frost. If the heads have grown very large and you are afraid they may split, there is a way to avoid this — twist the head growing in the soil. That way you will disrupt the root system and less nutrition will be delivered. The plant will slow its growth,» the agronomist explains.

The specialist warns that beet roots must be harvested before the first frost, otherwise they will not keep.

The agronomist also notes that along with harvesting, do not forget to prepare beds for autumn planting of onions and garlic.

«In the planned plots we sow mustard seeds. When the plants reach 15–20 centimeters (6–8 inches) in height, cut them with a hoe and dig them over. This is the best way to enrich the soil with fresh organic matter and repel wireworms,» Shadrina added.

Earlier, a festival was held in central Tyumen where fresh vegetables from the harvest were sold. See what prices tomatoes, cucumbers, and much more were sold at there.

Advice from a Tyumen agronomist was also published on how to prepare garden beds after harvesting onions and garlic.