When and how to harvest carob: the picking guide

Short answer: carob is harvested between August and September, before the first autumn rains, when the pod turns dark brown, almost black, goes hard and starts to drop on its own. The traditional method is to beat the tree with poles and collect the pods off the ground, just like olives. A mature carob tree (from its second decade) yields roughly 20 to 50 kg per tree.

When is carob harvested?

The window is short and it is now: August and September. The pod takes about 11 months to form — the flowers appear in summer and autumn and the fruit only ripens the following year. So while you are picking, the tree is already carrying next year's flowers.

The golden rule is to pick before the first autumn rains. A ripe pod is rich in sugar; if it catches rain on the ground it takes up moisture, ferments and grows mould, losing value and quality. Better a little early than a day after the first downpour.

How do you know carob is ripe?

A ripe pod changes colour and texture. It turns from green to dark brown, almost black, becomes hard and dry (it snaps if you try to bend it) and comes away easily — many fall by themselves. Pods are 10 to 30 cm long, depending on the variety.

How is carob picked?

It is still essentially manual work, very much like the olive harvest:

• Beating: strike the branches with poles so the pods fall. Spread sheets or nets on the ground, around the trunk, to collect them clean.
• Ground collection: gather what has fallen, including pods that had already dropped. Do not leave carob on the ground for long, especially if it is damp.

Mechanical systems exist (vibrators and vacuum collection of fallen pods, widely used in Spain), but trunk-mounted vibrators damage the carob's sensitive bark — so in Portugal harvesting stays mostly poles-and-hands.

Safety in picking and drying

• When beating, poles and falling pods happen overhead: use eye protection, take care with ladders on sloping ground, and never beat with a storm forecast.
• After picking, store carob well dried, in an airy place away from moisture. Carob stored damp grows mould and attracts storage pests.
• Honest note: we did not find an official Portuguese figure for the target storage moisture; if you know the local number, the key point is that the pod must be well dried before storing.

How much does a carob tree yield — and what is it worth?

The carob tree is slow to start: the first serious harvest usually comes at the end of the first decade, and only in the second decade does the tree crop fully, 20 to 50 kg per tree. It is a tree of patience — in return, it lives a long time, withstands drought and poor, saline soils, and has low flammability.

The price has risen sharply in recent years. To the producer, the arroba (15 kg) was stable until 2017 and then nearly tripled:

Portugal produces around 40,000 tonnes a year, almost all in the Algarve (98% of the national area, about 16,400 hectares). The most common variety is Mulata, and about 90% of cultivated carob trees are grafted — which leads to the question people search for most.

Why isn't my carob tree fruiting?

This is the question almost no page answers well. The carob is polygamo-trioecious: there are trees with only female flowers, trees with only male flowers and some hermaphrodites, on separate individuals. Only female flowers set pods — and they need pollen from a male tree nearby.

So if your carob flowers but never fruits, the likeliest reasons are: it is a male tree; it is female but there is no male pollinating nearby; or it is still young — from seed it can take over ten years and turn out an unpredictable sex. Plantations are advised to keep 10 to 20% male pollinator trees among the females. This is also why growers graft: it guarantees a productive female of a good variety instead of waiting ten years for a surprise.

Why is the seed worth more than the pulp?

The seed is only 10 to 12% of the pod's weight — the pulp is the other ~90%. And yet the seed sets the price of the whole crop. Whole carob is worth around €0.70/kg, but the seed can be worth close to €7.30/kg on the international market. The seed yields locust bean gum (E410), a natural thickener and gelling agent in high demand in the food industry — and that demand is what pushed the price up.

And there is a lovely detail: the carob seed is so consistent in weight — about 0.2 grams each — that ancient merchants used it to weigh gold and gems. That is where the word carat comes from (from the Greek kerátion, carob). Every jewel in the world is still measured in a unit born from this tree.

The pulp has its uses too: ground, it becomes carob flour, naturally sweet and caffeine-free, used as a chocolate alternative, in bread and cake coatings — the traditional Algarve carob bread is the best-known example.