What do you do with surplus_________________ (fill the blank)?

"One man's trash is another man's treasure" ... and one man's mulch might make another man's meal!

What do you do with surplus from you garden? From your animals?

I was thinking about the use of bean leaves. They can make a delicious, um, relish kind of thingy. Get a load of them, de-vein, pound up until soft, mix with salt, baking soda, garlic, and hot pepper powder, wrap in corn leaves and steam. Wow. Yum.  

I've been propagating comfrey like crazy throughout the years. I believe it's the Russian variety (Symphytum × uplandicum) with the pinkish flowers that is not as invasive as some of the others.

They grow very quickly and have a surplus of vegetation, sometimes too much... I will chop and drop it, use it in compost, feed it to the goats etc... I also want to get into making comfrey tea at some point.

Tyler Grace wrote:I've been propagating comfrey like crazy throughout the years. I believe it's the Russian variety (Symphytum × uplandicum) with the pinkish flowers that is not as invasive as some of the others.

They grow very quickly and have a surplus of vegetation, sometimes too much... I will chop and drop it, use it in compost, feed it to the goats etc... I also want to get into making comfrey tea at some point.

Nice!

I can't grow comfrey in my climate,  but I planted some by my mother- in- law's compost,  and she chops it and adds it straight back into the compost. It's a good way of bringing the compost nutrient back to the surface for the garden.

What do I do with surplus Eggs?

When my hens are in full swing, I tend to have more eggs than I can handle! We will eat eggs in a wide variety of forms such as fried, poached, boiled, scrambled and more. I'm a sucker for pickled eggs but I am still refining my recipe to make them especially delicious. Excess eggs tend to signal that it may be time to consider baking a variety of things in order to use them up. Even with selling or gifting cartons of eggs, we tend to be up to our gills!

If we are attending a gathering, you best bet your bottom dollar that we are bringing a platter of deviled eggs.

Timothy Norton wrote:What do I do with surplus Eggs?

When my hens are in full swing, I tend to have more eggs than I can handle! We will eat eggs in a wide variety of forms such as fried, poached, boiled, scrambled and more. I'm a sucker for pickled eggs but I am still refining my recipe to make them especially delicious. Excess eggs tend to signal that it may be time to consider baking a variety of things in order to use them up. Even with selling or gifting cartons of eggs, we tend to be up to our gills!

If we are attending a gathering, you best bet your bottom dollar that we are bringing a platter of deviled eggs. ;)

Oh my,  loooove pickled eggs and deviled eggs! But I never have surplus of that. How many hens do you have?

Another thing to make with surplus eggs is to use the yolks for custard (12 per liter of liquid), and the whites for meringues.

For that matter,  use the same number of egg yolks to thicken a sauce-- super rich!

Surplus food from the garden as well as eggs go to a non for profit organization near me.

John F Dean wrote:Surplus food from the garden as well as eggs go to a non for profit organization near me.

I love that John. We don't have a food bank where I live, but we have neighbors...

That’s a very interesting question. Up until now, I have preserved whatever we get a surplus off. I have a freeze dryer, so it is easy to freeze dry any surplus and put it away for later.
Our chickens take two breaks. The first one when it gets too hot and the second when we get fewer light hours. I used to water glass eggs. But now I freeze dry all of my extra eggs. Eggs are very expensive here. I do want to try pickling eggs though, since we have heard so much good about that. I have never tried eating pickled eggs, but it’s something to explore. I  also do a lot of canning and fermenting.
I also give garden surplus to my neighbors, and now that our children are moving away, so we have fewer mouths to feed, we are probably going to start selling some on the farmers market.
We also trade some crops for different ones. Lastly I feed a lot of garden surplus to our chickens. If I end up with so much i don’t know what to do with it, I give it away in a buy nothing group I am part of.

When there are too many eggs, the surplus flows to the dogs, the cat and neighbors.

We tend to have a surplus of peaches! Well, fruit in general. We eat our bellies full fresh fruit, make jam, stuff the freezer with pie-ready fruit and again, gift the overflow to the neighbours. This is orchard-land, so the neigbours tend to have an abundance of fruit at the same time, but we're the only ones with peaches.

Hmmm...what else... Surplus of rain? Rain barrels and two ponds. Because in the summer, there's too little water from the skies. Mulching, and planting tight in the veggie garden helps a lot.

Surplus of wood. The renovation spills out wood as well. The good bits get recycled back to the house, but the 'spent' wood goes to the woodshed and warms us with the help of the rocket mass heater.
There's also wood coming from the garden, the orchard. Twigs go to twig heaps, that also receive bundles of ripped-out weeds, and a scattering of flower seeds every now and then. The coming season will show if the flower seed scatterings are working, I'm trying it the first time.

Oh and we actually had a surplus of chicken at one point. The fox had taken chicken from the neighbours, so our surplus filled their gap.

Ulla Bisgaard wrote:Lastly I feed a lot of garden surplus to our chickens. If I end up with so much i don’t know what to do with it, I give it away in a buy nothing group I am part of.

A "buy nothing" group is pretty handy.

Nina Surya wrote:
We tend to have a surplus of peaches! Well, fruit in general. We eat our bellies full fresh fruit, make jam, stuff the freezer with pie-ready fruit and again, gift the overflow to the neighbours. This is orchard-land, so the neigbours tend to have an abundance of fruit at the same time, but we're the only ones with peaches.

Wow! What a lovely surplus. Ever tried bokashi for the garden? You could probably market the organic fertilizer.

Nathanael Szobody wrote:

Wow! What a lovely surplus. Ever tried bokashi for the garden? You could probably market the organic fertilizer.

It is, quite a sweet surplus
I haven't tried bokashi, ever - sounds like an excellent idea, I'll look into that, thanks!

@Nathanael Szobody
I love the buy nothing group I am part of. 2 years ago, I started offering garden tours here (a gift of knowledge), and now I have 40 people showing up regularly for tours. This month I am starting small free classes in food preservation, after some of them asked. For the first class, they will join me, while I make cranberry juice and cranberry sauce.

Squash leaves are a much neglected vegetable. They taste very similar to stinging nettles and make great soup greens. It's a great fall-back if some squash isn't producing the way you would wish for any reason: "oh, but I'm growing this for the greens."

I often dry some vegetables in the sun, either whole or sliced, and then I take them out and cook them in the winter. They taste delicious!

We like to eat as much of the plant as possible and get creative.
But if we have extra we give it to family/friends, add it to compost, chop and drop sometimes, and we're starting to sell at my occasional yard stand on days that are nice and we're home.

I give extra fruit to the people who come to the food giveaway at my church. The receivers of food all have nicer cars, clothes and phones than I do.
JohN S
PDX OR

Riona Abhainn wrote:We like to eat as much of the plant as possible and get creative.
But if we have extra we give it to family/friends, add it to compost, chop and drop sometimes, and we're starting to sell at my occasional yard stand on days that are nice and we're home.

Du you have any interesting ways of preparing unconventional plant parts?

John Suavecito wrote:I give extra fruit to the people who come to the food giveaway at my church. The receivers of food all have nicer cars, clothes and phones than I do.
JohN S
PDX OR

They're probably further in debt than you are though  ;-)

i found myself in a Situation last week where I bought myself 15 pounds of onions that were practically free but not the best quality, so I have a challenge ahead of me now (and some interesting smells coming from the pantry).
Over the weekend, I caramelized a crockpot full, which then became onion/tomato jam (which was lovely, another batch will get made this weekend). Some more were caramelized and went into the freezer for future culinary me.

But I still have a crapton left!
I'm going to pickle some (Jay's delightful quick pickle recipe here, I think https://permies.com/t/184278/pickling-recipe#1457496 ), and today I'm going to make onion bhajis and onion curry for my dinner.
Usually the rule in my kitchen is "throw an egg on it" but this week everything is "throw an extra onion in it"...

(there is a great onion soup recipe, maybe from Alice Waters, that is basically "roast a truckload of onions for a full day and blend them and voilá". It does make the best onion soup I've ever had, but it caused the most amazing gastric distress afterward, to the extent that I've never dared to make that recipe --or any other onion soup-- again! so onion soup is out, LOL)

Love it Teresa!
Soundslike the thing for you would be a giant crock that you can pack with chopped onions and cover with salt water. Onion kraut. They would only get better over time!

Nathanael Szobody wrote:Onion kraut

that sounds superb!! never too many ferments in this house....

This year I decided to ferment ½ gal jar of cabbage, and the rest I have chopped up and have in the dehydrator. The snails were getting too many for me to fend off, I decided to cut the losses and save what I have, I have more coming, but I have never dehydrated cabbage before, and I thought you know that would probably make a good soup in time to come.

Harvest is not great, but each year it does seem to get larger

What do you do with surplus_________________ (fill the blank)?

What do you do with surplus zucchini?

Leave it as an unknown neighbor's porch.

we're at the time of year where there is a strong gift economy. Pine nuts, citrus, passionfruit and avocados are getting passed around by people who have them in their yards and need to get rid of them.
I was generous with the fruit jams I made this year and was so pleased that now people are remembering me with winter gifts!!
I now have a crapload of pine nuts (araucaria angustifolia, also known as monkey puzzle tree) to figure out what to do with. I usually just cook them like I would chestnuts in Japanese or Korean food. Here they're usually cooked with lots of meat, but occasionally in cake or just roasted and eaten plain (they're a massive pain to shell).