Your fall glut is somebody's fall harvest program

Right now, somewhere in your garden, there is more zucchini or tomatoes or squash than your household will ever eat before frost. You already know the feeling: too much to can, too much to give the neighbors who already have their own glut.

Here is the reframe. Your surplus is the same raw material that organized harvest programs run on every fall.

A garden that grows too much of one thing is not a mistake. It is somebody's donation, still on the vine.

A farmer planted 44 rows of corn just to give it away

The Maryland Food Bank runs a program called Farm to Food Bank. It works three ways, per the Maryland Food Bank's logistics writeup:

• Farmers call in excess produce for pickup.
• Staff and volunteers glean fields directly, with the farmer's permission.
• The food bank purchases produce outright when donations fall short.

This past fall, that program pulled off something worth repeating. A Baltimore County farmer planted 44 rows of sweet corn with donation as the plan from day one. Volunteers gleaned several thousand pounds of it, splitting the harvest between a local crisis center that feeds about 100 families a week and the county food bank, per the Maryland Food Bank's fall gleaning story.

Nobody had to guess what to do with the extra corn. It had a home before it was even planted.

A neighborhood organized around its own fruit trees

You do not need a farm to do a version of this. In West Seattle, the Rotary Club and Scouting America teamed up for a community gleaning day, sending volunteers to 20 sites where residents had volunteered more than 40 fruit trees for harvest, all of it headed to local food banks, according to West Seattle Blog's coverage.

Forty backyard trees is not a farm's worth of produce. It is what happens when a neighborhood decides fruit nobody was going to eat alone should not just fall and rot.

Twenty sites, more than 40 trees, one gleaning day. Nobody grew a single extra branch on purpose.

Fresh produce is the hardest thing for a pantry to stock

Fresh produce is often the hardest thing for a food pantry to keep stocked. AmpleHarvest.org points to Feeding America research showing 30 to 40 percent of college students face some food insecurity during school, per AmpleHarvest's feature on Bowling Green State University's Falcon Food Pantry.

That pantry depends on exactly the kind of surplus sitting in your garden bed right now.

Canned goods keep a pantry running. Fresh produce is the part that is hardest to keep on the shelf.

Call your pantry before the glut hits the compost pile

You do not need 44 rows or 40 trees to make this work. Most local food pantries take fresh produce, exactly what a shelf-stable food drive usually cannot supply.

Call your local pantry and ask what they take and how. The corn that fed a crisis center serving about 100 families a week, and the fruit from more than 40 backyard trees, both started as someone deciding their extra was worth a phone call instead of a compost pile.

Bottom line

• Your garden surplus is the same raw material organized harvest programs run on every fall.
• A Baltimore County farmer planted 44 rows of corn as a planned donation, and volunteers gleaned thousands of pounds for a crisis center and a county food bank, per the Maryland Food Bank.
• A West Seattle gleaning day pulled fruit from more than 40 volunteered backyard trees across 20 sites, per West Seattle Blog.
• Fresh produce is one of the hardest things for a food pantry to source, so call yours and ask what it takes.

Your zone

Zone 3-4: [VERIFY: no zone 3-4 specific source opened this pass]

Zone 5-6: You are in the classic plant-a-row calendar, with donations ramping from early summer through fall storage crops. The Maryland Food Bank's corn glean and the West Seattle fruit-tree day both land squarely in this fall-harvest-push window, per Maryland Food Bank and West Seattle Blog.

Zone 7-8: [VERIFY: neither Maryland nor West Seattle's exact hardiness zone was confirmed against an opened source this pass]

Zone 9-10: [VERIFY: no zone 9-10 specific source opened this pass]

Zone 11+: [VERIFY: no zone 11+ specific source opened this pass]

Sources

1. Maryland Food Bank, a busy fall for Farm to Food Bank
2. Maryland Food Bank, managing gleaning logistics
3. West Seattle Blog, fruit from dozens of local trees donated to food banks
4. AmpleHarvest.org, Falcon Food Pantry feature Photo: Fruits and Vegetables (20160330-FNS-LSC-0151) by USDAgov, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AFruits_and_Vegetables_(20160330-FNS-LSC-0151).jpg Photo: 2015 Feds Feeds Families-Gleaning at MAGNET (Food) Warehouse (20150911-DM-LSC-3017) by USDAgov, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2015_Feds_Feeds_Families-Gleaning_at_MAGNET_(Food)_Warehouse_(20150911-DM-LSC-3017).jpg Photo: 2015 Feds Feeds Families-Gleaning at MAGNET (Food) Warehouse (20150911-DM-LSC-2991) by USDAgov, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2015_Feds_Feeds_Families-Gleaning_at_MAGNET_(Food)_Warehouse_(20150911-DM-LSC-2991).jpg Photo: 2015 Feds Feeds Families-Gleaning at MAGNET (Food) Warehouse (20150911-DM-LSC-2996) by USDAgov, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:2015_Feds_Feeds_Families-Gleaning_at_MAGNET_(Food)_Warehouse_(20150911-DM-LSC-2996).jpg