Multiple harvest vegetable is vegetable that after cut harvest, its stem will grow again for next harvest. I love to grow multiple harvest vegetable in my HAVA systems. We need to germinate once and enjoy 3 to 5 harvest that will keep on supplying vegetable to my kitchen for 4 to 6 months without replanting.
In the picture above, my Kailan is growing very well. The part circled in red was harvested about a month ago. Now there are 2 branch out almost ready to harvest again.
In order to enjoy long harvesting period, we need to ensure our grow bed has very good aeration and enough nutrients supply to the multiple harvest vegetable. If the system does not have enough nutrients, the plants will not grow well, get old fast, easily attack by diseases or the subsequent harvest will not taste as good in terms of quality.
At the same time, we also need to keep pest infection at bay. When we grow a multiple harvest vegetable, we have more tendency to attract various kind of pests like caterpillars, aphids and others. Caterpillar infection is very common and should be removed at the very early stage. Caterpillar is a “eating machine” that eat and grow not stop. As the get bigger and older, they eat more and more. If there is a large colony of the them exist and not attended, it will come to a point, they will eat up all the green leaves over night!
When we keep cutting the multiple harvest vegetable (Harvesting), the cut wound have tendency to attract virus infection as well. Making sure that the plants are all free from pest and infection is very important.
Others multiple harvest vegetable we can enjoy many rounds of harvesting are amaranth, kangkong, water crest, sweet potato leaves, Brazilian spinach and many others.
Spices that is growing well under such conditions are basil, mint, dill and others.