Harvesting, Preserving, Sharing
After the hard but satisfying work of gardening – experience the pleasure of eating your own fruit and vegetables. When do you harvest your crop and what can you do if it ripens all at once? Be prepared! This page offers harvesting information and tips about how to preserve or donate and abundant harvest.
Harvesting
- Fruit Harvesting Chart (pdf)
- Herb Harvesting Chart (pdf)
- Vegetable Harvesting Chart (pdf)
- Vegetable Harvest and Storage (pdf)
Harvesting Videos
Click on the links below to join local gardening expert Wendy Krupnick as she shows you how to harvest vegetables from your garden in a series of short videos.
(Special thanks to Russian River TV for video production.)
Preserving
- National Center for Home Food Preservation
Includes information about drying, canning, freezing and fermentation. - Wild Fermentation is another way to preserve the harvest
Gleaning: Collecting or donating excess produce
If you have more fruits or vegetables than you can harvest, eat or give away, please consider contacting a local gleaning group. They will come to your garden or orchard, pick whatever you would like to donate and take it to a local food pantry or soup kitchen to feed to others in our community who might be hungry or have limited access to healthy food.
Do you have a fruit or nut tree in your neighborhood that doesn’t get harvested? Consider asking your neighbors if you can help them pick the produce and share it withe the families in your neighborhood. Or ask them to contact a gleaning organization. Always ask first, since the owner may have plans to use their produce.
Gleaning organizations in Sonoma County
The following organizations have trained volunteers who harvest surplus produce from farms and homes and provide it to those who can use it.
- Sonoma County Indian Health Project: Healthy Traditions Department – Contact Wendy Lippard, (707) 521-4511, covers most of Sonoma County
- Farm to Pantry – Contact gleaning@farmtopantry.org, (707) 955-9898, covers most of Sonoma County
- Petaluma Bounty, Bounty Hunters – Contact bountyhunters@petalumabounty.org, Petaluma area