Arugula, commonly known as rocket, is a flavorful addition to salads, sandwiches, and even pizzas. To enjoy its best taste, understanding the right harvesting time is essential.
If you're also harvesting lettuce, feel free to pick arugula simultaneously, selecting from both young and mature plants. Gardening expert Ruth Hayes notes that arugula is versatile, allowing you to harvest baby leaves or fully grown ones for salads and stir-fries, and its flowers are edible too if you let the plants go to seed.
This quick-growing green can be harvested shortly after planting, and continuous picking throughout the season encourages new growth. Tony O'Neill from Simplify Gardening emphasizes that regular harvesting promotes vitality in the plant, so don't hesitate to trim the leaves once they reach the ideal size.
It's important to determine which stage of maturity offers the flavor you prefer. Follow these expert suggestions to time your arugula harvest perfectly.
Ruth has horticultural training and holds qualifications from the Royal Horticultural Society. She enjoys documenting important gardening tasks and sowing various flower seeds in her garden.
Timing Your Arugula Harvest for Optimal Flavor
Fern Berg, a gardening expert and founder of Tree Vitalize, shares that arugula can be harvested at three growth stages. Generally, the plant matures about 40 days after planting, but you can start harvesting by
