[Community_garden] What do you do about unpicked produce?

[Sharon Gordon]

We have volunteers that can help pick if you or family member are sick or
injured.  If someone goes on vacation, usually whoever is watering and
weeding their plot for them harvests the produce that must be picked  like
tomatoes or green beans for themselves and leaves anything that can hold in
the ground like onions or winter squash or greens until the vacationer
returns.  If it's more than the vacation volunteer can use, they often
donate the excess to the soup kitchen.

At one of the garden sites ripe produce is often stolen including from
people that are actively working their gardens and just waiting for
something to ripen a bit more.  This a a particular ongoing  problem with
tomatoes, though  people have stolen as many as 300 radishes from a single
garden overnight.  This not a solution I'd reommend though :-).

In some gardens this would be considered neglecting your plot and grounds
for it going to someone on the waiting list.  However it's often the case
that someone's vacation volunteer is not keeping up as promised and the
gardener has no idea because s/he is happily on vacation and thinks
everything is under control.

Sharon