Nathanael Szobody

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  ;-)

Very nice! The small brown ones are not fully developed,  but the plump gray ones look like they might be viable :-)

Judith Browning wrote:
We did pick a few calix for a very nice tea but I had hopes we might get some seed so left most of the flowers.  I even dug one and brought it inside to finish up and there are what might be seed pods but I really don't know what the seeds look like as I didn't know I planted them in the first place😏

Here are seeds and a pod

You're probably right Burra. So the lower original structure was quite a little hovel at some point!

Judith, did you ever get to harvest? I suppose I'm too late. Calix and leaves can be used for tea. Best if dried out first, but a short boil will brew the fresh ones nicely too.

Thanks for the tip. Eucalyptus also makes great mulch. Nature decides when it's ready to integrate with the soil.

Hi, roselle is native to where I live, and I can confirm that sometimes they just won't germinate. Usually that means they're too young. Keep  them till next year and they will probably sprout nicely.

It is not clear to me whether it's dormancy or heat layering that makes them sprout well. Might be both, because some people around here will plant young seeds after pouring boiling water over them. Give it a try!

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."

Such a cool house! Looks to me like the lower upper sections were both original; many Europeans used to keep the animals below. In the winter their heat helped warm the house above.

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.