Some plants can be easily harvested by simply snipping the fruit or vegetables off with your fingernails, but foods with thicker stems require scissors or garden shears. For lettuce you will want to carefully inspect your leaves, pulling back any parts of the lettuce you do not want to harvest to expose the lower leaves. Look for the lowest leaves and cut them off. With tomatoes, you'll want to pick the tomatoes including the small stems. Each vegetable is a little different, so be careful. 

We recommend washing your produce as soon as you harvest it by placing it in a large bowl full of water and rinsing it draining the water and refilling. You should rinse your produce a minimum of three times or until the water in the bowl is completely clear. In Hawai’i, it's important to make sure that all fresh foods are carefully washed to prevent the risk of Rat Lungworm Disease. If you see that there are nibbles from any of your vegetables pay extra care in making sure that they are clean and that there are no bugs. For greens, wrap them in a paper towel and place them in a Ziploc bag. Most greens will keep for 1 to 2 weeks in the crisper; other vegetables can be placed in a plastic bag to keep fresh for several weeks, but we recommend eating what you harvest right away so it's the freshest and most nutritious. 

For some plants collecting seeds is very easy, for example peppers, when you eat a pepper save the seeds on a napkin or paper plate and let them dry out, after a few days you can plant them and grow new pepper plants. For things like tomatoes, simply squeeze a few seeds from the tomato onto the soil and they will grow again. For other foods you may have to wait until they go to seed. With lettuce, after several weeks or months of producing leaves, sometimes the lettuce will start to get tall. When this happens, you should allow it to continue growing until it begins to produce flowers and seeds. Once the flowers have died back, you can scoop the seeds off put them in a dry container without a lid where they can dry for a few days until you're ready to store them. Pay attention to the foods you harvest and the types of seeds that they have. Some plants will only go to seed after the edible portion has died off. We recommend eating them instead and purchasing fresh seeds from the local stores. Foods like radishes, iceberg lettuce, kale, and broccoli, are best if you eat them and purchase seeds or seedlings from a store or local nursery.

When it comes to storing seeds, it is essential to make sure that they are completely dry, any bit of moisture can result in mold and ruin seeds. Once you're sure your seeds have completely dried on a paper plate, paper towel, or in a lidless container, you can place them in an airtight plastic bag or other container until you are ready to use them; recycled medicine bottles are a great way to store seeds.