Overabundance Can Be Good...

Once again, the gardens are over producing based on what our family of four can consume. We are giving away organic produce to our neighbors and friends by the bushel. I'm bringing Kale, collards, lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, eggplant, spinach, swiss chard, potatoes, basil and green onions to work with me daily. Pretty soon, I'll also be looking to rehome cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and brussels sprouts too. There's a lot of overlap right now and the slow phasing out of the warm weather crops and burgeoning cold weather crops is creating a serious log jam of produce. I hate to waste anything, especially home grown organic foods but I'm serving the environment by sinking carbon, our pocket book, our health and that of our friends and neighbors by going full bore with the garden space I have. Anything less would be a true waste.

This week I'll be planting Maui Onion sets, Purple Garlic sets and Dutch Red Shallot sets. I'll probably look at pulling my still producing tomato plants in a couple of weeks as well. I'll take off all the fruit before composting the vines, even if they're barely blushing. Tomatoes will continue to self ripen if there's just a hint of color outside of green. To all my vegetable garden beds I'll be applying some serious compost that I've been working on for a couple of months now. As I've pulled up my old warm weather non-producers, they have been added to the compost pile. I now have a rich black loamy compost with plenty of worms as a reward. This will be spread around the emerging seedlings and mature plants alike in order to feed them, help retain moisture, dissuade weed seeds from sprouting, raise the soil temperature and help it retain heat.