The risks of waiting too long to harvest garden vegetables

We sowed. We planted. We watered, watched and waited. And now, beanstalks are reaching for the heavens, tomatoes are getting plump and zucchini are seemingly doubling in size overnight.Timing their harvests is a balancing act, and in many cases you, as gardener, are forced to choose between optimal flavor and yield. Sometimes, one must be compromised in favor of the other — or to save your crop. Just don’t wait too long. Should you wait for tomatoes to fully ripen? Tomatoes are ripe when their mature color — red, yellow, orange, purple, etc. — is uniform. But waiting for that perfect vine-ripened moment often means risking loss. Plump, juicy tomatoes may split open on the vine or be devoured by hungry critters, who know a perfectly ripe tomato when they see one.I pick my tomatoes a few day