Solutions to an Over-Productive Garden

September might bring a mixture of joy and pain for you, if you're among the ranks of Southern Oregon backyard gardeners. There are all those ripe tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini...and they're sitting around going moldy because you don't have time to can or preserve all the produce or the appetite to eat any more vegetables. Everybody you know has the same problem, except for that one Martha Stewart-wannabe who's been efficiently canning and dehydrating things for three weeks now (but everybody secretly hopes her neatly organized pantry suddenly topples over on her, so she doesn't count).

The point is, what are you supposed to do with all that produce? There are plenty of people in Southern Oregon whose crops didn't pan out quite like they'd hoped (the Scoop being one of them. My heirloom tomato plant and I are not on speaking terms), and plenty more who didn't have crops to begin with. Connect your veggies with those folks. How?

-List your bounty in the "free" section on craigslist. Just leave them in a box on your porch (or wherever) and put up a listing. They'll be gone before you know it.

-Bring them to work, church, soccer practice...anywhere you see lots of people.

-Get in touch with an organization that will pick up your food. Try:

Neighborhood Harvest: http://harvest-nw.heroku.com/ Shockingly, the newspaper article mentioned on their site is worth reading.

The Southern Oregon Gleaning Network: http://gleaningnetwork.com/

ACCESS: take a look at the list of food banks

And now that you know, don't let anything else go to waste! At least post an ad on craigslist. Seriously, it takes two seconds!

Image courtesy of sxc.hu