Seasonal vegetables: It's right when it's ripe

This time of year, vegetable gardens should be bursting with fresh produce. The Old Farmer's Almanac Web site, Almanac.com, tells how to recognize when fruits and vegetables are ready to harvest. For monthly seasonal advice, recipes, and craft ideas, go directly to http://www.almanac.com/season/ index.php.

Beans: Taste one and decide. You many want to start harvesting French snap or string beans when they are about the diameter of a chopstick, maybe even thinner. Standard varieties are ready when they are as thick as a pencil and before the seeds swell and become visible through the pods. Lima beans are ready when their pods take on a green color and feel full. When bean pods turn white, feed them to the pigs or the compost pile.

Chives: Cut before the purple blossoms form and keep them cut back for the sweetest flavor.

Corn: Ripe corn has a tight husk, and its silk is dry and brown. If you have serious doubts, open an ear and stab a kernel with your fingernail. If the kernel contains milk, it's ripe; if it contains water, it isn't; and if it's tough and dry and has no liquid at all, it's overripe.

Onions: Harvest green onions when the bulbs are one to two inches in diameter. Wait for the tops of storage onions to fall over and turn brown before you pull them.

Pumpkins and Winter Squashes: These cousins are ready to harvest when their skin hardens. Press your fingernail through the flesh. If you have to work at it, the squash is ripe; if it's very easy to pierce, the squash is immature.

Summer Squashes: Yellow squash and zucchini are at their best when they're four inches long. Pick them young. Plenty more will follow.

Watermelon: When the stem curls and turns brown and the place where the melon touches the ground turns yellow, it's ready. Rap it with your knuckles and listen for a dull, hollow sound.