How to weigh and record your harvest

The scale

A digital kitchen scale handles most harvests. When you choose one, or check the one you have, look for:

• A tare button (sometimes labelled zero), so the bowl or basket doesn’t count.
• Enough capacity. The maximum is printed on the scale or in its manual. A full basket of potatoes or one big squash can go over it; weigh those in parts.
• Units you read easily: pounds and ounces, or grams. Many scales switch between them with a button.
• A platform wide enough to hold your basket without it tipping.

For heavy loads, a hanging luggage scale works with a bucket or a bag on its hook. A bathroom scale works too: weigh yourself holding the crate, then without it, and subtract. It’s coarse, so keep it for the big loads, not a handful of beans.

Tare the container

1. Put the empty bowl or basket on the scale.
2. Press tare. The display goes back to zero.
3. Add the harvest and read the weight. That number is the crop alone.

No tare button? Weigh the empty basket once, write its weight on a strip of tape on the basket, and subtract it every time.

Mixed baskets

Weigh each crop on its own, so every crop’s season adds up. Two ways to do it:

• Tare as you go. Leave the bowl on the scale. Add the tomatoes, write down the weight, press tare; add the beans, write that down, press tare again.
• Take one out. Weigh the whole basket, lift out one crop and weigh again. The difference is that crop.

Herbs and leafy greens in the same basket are usually easier to bunch than to weigh: count the bunches and write those down.

Units, and how to write them

• Pounds and ounces. There are 16 ounces in a pound, so ounces aren’t decimals: 1 lb 6 oz is 1.375 lb, not 1.6 lb. Write what the scale shows, unit included. If it shows decimal pounds (1.38 lb), write that, rather than turning it into ounces in your head.
• Kilograms and grams. Under a kilo, grams read well (850 g); above it, kilograms with one decimal place are plenty (1.4 kg).
• One system per season. Pick pounds or kilograms and stay with it, so a crop’s total adds up without converting.

Be consistent rather than exact

For a garden log, the same method every time matters more than the last gram. Decide once, and keep to it:

• Weigh at the same stage: as picked, or after trimming. Carrot and beet tops add a lot, so decide whether they’re in or out.
• Weigh before washing, or shake the produce dry first. Water weighs something too.
• Use the same scale through the season when you can.
• Round the same way: the nearest ounce, or the nearest 10 g, is precise enough.
• Weigh soon after picking, before anything is eaten on the way to the kitchen.

When not to weigh

Some crops make more sense counted or bunched. Count cucumbers, peppers, heads of lettuce and ears of corn; bunch herbs and greens; measure berries by the pint if that’s how you pick them. Whatever you choose, keep one measure per crop for the season, and never add pounds to bunches. How to keep a garden harvest log has a longer list.

Write it down at the scale

Keep the log next to the scale so the number goes straight onto paper. Our free harvest log template has a column for the amount with its unit and one for how you measured it.

In Rowleaf, our harvest journal app, you can enter pounds and ounces together, or kilograms, grams, items, bunches or pints. Each entry keeps the unit you logged, totals never mix weight with counts or bunches, and a “Last time” amount for each crop saves typing on a busy morning.