The other day, we eluded to the concept we use that we’d call “essential harvests.” Let’s define that, which will help you more clearly understand our objectives with gardens and food harvesting.
There’s little doubt that many gardens will produce far more food than is reasonably needed. The pictures we’re showing here illustrate the very end of our community garden. This is almost 1,700 square feet of growing space. To say that it produces a lot of food is an understatement.
By our eyes, this garden is picked entirely clean. A casual observer might note that we have a few plants remaining, they might think we’re leaving “food on the table” as it were. As experienced growers that produce a lot of food, that’s just how it is sometimes.
We likely “could” harvest much more food. But, there’s more to the story. For example, it would be even more gallon bags of kale, komatsuna or produce that are less than ideal for harvesting. We have plenty of these things at the ready. In fact, we’ve likely harvested more than we technically need for the next year.
We don’t feel guilty about this at all. In fact, excess organics are great for the garden and soils when you practice “chop and drop” (or straight composting) like we discussed the other day. Gardens are “net negative” for nutrition since much of the produce (and thus organics) are actually harvested. Leaving some of those organics helps balance the equation a little better.
This is also one of the reason we don’t necessarily use “every edible thing.” For example, we compost our carrot tops and many other things that might be considered edible. In our eyes, these things are more valuable to us as compost than they are as more produce to stuff in our freezer.
We say this because some of you might be experiencing “grower’s guilt.” It can be a real thing. But, it’s also a totally normal thing, even for “serious” growers and preservationist like ourselves. It’s helpful to frame your thinking in the context of the entire organic process and not just the relationship between the gardener and the garden.
We’re not sure if we’ll be making any remaining trips to our community garden this season. We pretty much got everything dialed in on our last visit. But, we certainly can go grab some fresh kale or komatsuna, should the need arise!
