I used to have a big garden, and I loved it. It was a lot of work, but it was also very rewarding. I also liked sharing the extra food with other people. Now, people tend to shower me with fresh vegetables when they have an overabundance. It's nice. I know I will be gifted with lots of zucchini, so I'm always on the lookout for new recipes for it. I've also learned that I like grilled veggies now too, since we tried throwing some on the grill last year. Do you give or receive free food from gardening? What do you make with your gifted veggies?
I always end up receiving zucchini, kale and beets from friends. They are all easy to grow and people get sick of them fast! You'll never see anyone giving away carrot or potatoes.
Yes, here in Ohio, we get gifts of zucchini and squash all the time, but I really love them so I don't mind. My grandparents owned a small, commercial greenhouse plus about eight extremely large garden plots when they were alive, so I grew up eating tons of vegetables. For a surplus of zucchini and squash, I like to chop in up, sautee it, and put it in pasta, particularly with a good Alfredo sauce. Also, if you get sick of them, you can cut them up and freeze them in freezer bags for later use. They both keep extremely well. As for myself, I am putting in my first garden I have had in a long time. I'm very much looking forward to the tomatoes, especially the green ones! My fried green tomato recipe is to die for!
I have a small potted plants of broad leaf plantain and aloe. We had a lot of aloe which is a small leaf type that's not too bitter, so it's good for your skin to protect yourself it's good for eatingLog In. When we had quite a few leaves we share them with our neighbors. Not many people know aboutLog In. I make tea leaves out of the dried leaves for my family. Not much room in my apt. little back yard that I can grow a few things in pots. I use recycled water for watering and pray for rain.
In my opinion, free food tastes better. It doesn't matter if it's freshly grown produce, or something extra a friend has in her pantry that she doesn't want. I do the same, share what I don't need. Occasionally, I'll pick up the wrong kind of something at the store, and rather than drive all the way back to return or exchange it, I will simply offer it to a friend or neighbor. I sometimes grow tomatoes, and have grown herbs and peppers in the past as well, but for some reason, my tomatoes don't seem to be taking off this year. I occasionally get some free lemons from a neighbor, but he hasn't been sharing as much this year, and the lemons in the grocery store are tiny and not nearly as juicy.
I never have enough garden produce to give it out for free ,but I have been the recipient of free food a few times, which I thought was nice. One time a lady was desperately trying to unload free cucumbers and zuchinni at the gas station. Naturally, I helped her out.. One of the greenhouses near here gives away free tomato plants every year. Which is very nice, and recently in a thrift store they were giving away bananas.
My neighbour has a beautiful garden. They are Italian and grow peppers and tomatoes. Every year they give us a basket of tomatoes. It's great. I take all the tomatoes and cook them down into tomato sauce and freeze the sauce. I have a herb garden and grow basil, oregano, thyme so my sauce is fantastic with the fresh herbs. My mother grow garlic in her garden so I add some fresh garlic. It's organic and delicious and best of all free tomato sauce.
I grow my own fruit and veg too. I love to make the most of the garden and get some food from it. I like to trade some of what I grow with what others have too. One of my friends grows apples. I have a plum tree. So I trade my plums for their apples! It's great to be able to do this and get food that I want for free and put the over abundance of food to good use that I get from my own garden. I'll also go foraging for berries from time to time, although I don't tend to do this so much now I live in a town. Where I lived before it was easy to get raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, sloes and even wild garlic, hazelnuts and chestnuts. I loved it. It's the main downside I have with now living in a town!
We do get to receive fruits and veggies from our neighbors, although we grow our own. It is indeed nice to grow your own food because you get to save money that way and not buy anymore from the market.
My grandmother used to have a huge aloe vera plant in her yard. It was great for medicinal uses, like helping heal sunburns and scrapes. It's also good for your hair, I found out recently. I bought shampoo with aloe, and it's better than any other conditioner, in my opinion. I hope you get some rain. We've had more than our share. I wish I could send you some. I may take your idea and plant some stuff in pots. I've heard that container gardening can work well, and I'd love to grow my own stuff again. It saves a lot of money, and it's just nice to have fresh food any time you want it.
I tried growing lettuce on my windowsill, and it lasted a full season. That was really nice, because whenever I buy lettuce, it goes bad before I finish it. When you are growing something, you literally only eat however much you want to and let the rest grow until it's ready to be eaten. Unfortunately, all of my other gardening experiments didn't end very well, so I gave up on trying to grow my own food for the time being. It's still nice to have a little windowsill herb garden so you can at least have readily accessible herbs for when you are cooking (and it's much easier to maintain than some of the other stuff I tried, like zucchini or cucumbers).
We used to grow a whole host of vegetables when I was younger, but unfortunately we have since stopped. But at the time, we would share out produce throughout the street that we lived on, and it was a very nice atmosphere. I imagine that it was similar back in the day when community was more of a thing. You save so much money growing your own stuff, and you know there has nothing that has been added.
I have tried gardening crops, and based on my experience, It doesn't provide enough to replace regular vegetables and fruits shopping. Also is very time consuming, with doing this I realized how hard is the harvesting trade thus I now respect farmers more than ever. The most succesful crops I got were the papaya and chili pepper ones, because they grew steadier under local weather conditions.
My grandfather sells some of his crops. My grandmother passed away the year before last year, and so my grandfather has a lot of time on his hands these days. he grown many crops in his back garden, and sells them to people in the street. He seems to be making a good amount of side income from it, but I don't know if you are supposed to have some sort of permit for doing that.
When I first started gardening in my neighborhood, I was the only one on the street that grew their own food. Now, we have several neighbors with backyard gardens, and we even have a neighbor that has a couple of goats and chickens too. Before my other neighbors started gardening, I absolutely wasn't given any food. However, I used to give neighbors a few cantaloupes, tomatoes, and garlic cloves away. I always wanted to share more with my neighbors, so they could taste how wonderful fresh off the vine fruits and vegetables are, but my children would always get to those pickings before me. So, I didn't mind because these children hated tomatoes before I started a garden and now they can't get enough of them. With that extra squash/zucchini put it in your spaghetti sauce, freeze them, make stuffed baked squash and zucchini boats. You could also make zucchini fritters too! There's just so many ways you can use them, oh if you have a spiralizer or mandolin slicer, you can turn your veggies into veggie noodles for a delicious veggie spaghetti dish.
A vegetable garden would be nice. One can always look forward to organically grown produce that you can just pick a few steps away from your kitchen. I'd start one but our garden is not that big. Plus, there's always the risk of it getting stolen because we just live along the highway. Perhaps if I have a bit more of land, I'll be able to get to work.
Our home is situated on a hill-side government-funded subdivision. The surroundings have a rural vibe. Trees, shrubs and weird insects aplenty. Although the lot area my parents bought isn't big enough to accommodate a vegetable garden, we made use of the vacant lots nearby and planted fruit trees and vegetables while they're not yet occupied. We have bananas, avocados, guavas, jack fruits, gooseberries and papayas growing around our house. My dad and brother also planted water spinach, bamboo, chilli and root crops (sweet potatoes and cassava).
I would love to grow my own vegetables but currently I don't have a garden. My mum used to grow everything though, chillis, onion, lettuce, cucumber, sweetcorn, courgette and strawberries etc and I love it, they taste to much better than shop bought vegetables and it's free!
I choose to rise above the din and postulate that freebies are scarce in The place I come from. In any event, I have looked for freebies from various sites and am of the opinion that there are no freebies in this world as we know it. Just try to google 'free lunch' and you get the idea of what I mean. I usually take advantage of free food during weddings when food is free for all. It goes without saying that in my vernacular 'mtaka cha mvunguni sharti ainame'. There are no free things in things in this world. Ask Richard Branson.
