I probably should've explained this in my itch.io page, that's my bad, ill add it after making this post.
When a crop is fully grown, you can harvest it by hitting it with the hoe.
The escape glitch you mentioned certainly wasn't intended behavior, and I don't know how that escaped me during development. Perhaps if I revisit this game after the jam, I'll be able to fix it! Thank you for letting me know though!