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What sort of produce do you get in excess @brendawebster44?
Personally, I either freeze, dry or bottle in oil.
I often have far too many tomatoes and freeze the excess to be used later in soups, sauces and stews.
I dry my other tomatoes and chillies in a dehydrator that was graciously purchased for me after the great house fumigation of 2019. It's a long story, but in short, I forgot to turn the preheated oven right down to dry the world's hottest chilli in and set them on fire instead. The resulting plumes of smoke were full of capsaicin, which effectively pepper sprayed everyone inside the house, including the dog. I was not popular after that.
Oil is a fantastic preserver for herbs, tomatoes, chillies, capsicum, eggplants, lemons and many others. I started using the oil with my chillies after some bugs got into and spoiled a whole batch I was air-drying.
I want to try more pickling, but I'm now somewhat turned off from the process after doing pickled eggs. They might not have been the best first choice, as I believe a taste for them might need to be acquired over a long, long period of time. Making some gherkins from excess cucumbers might be fun and less likely to offend my taste buds.
Something I started doing with my lettuce last year was to plant out about a dozen. Instead of harvesting the whole plant, I just took a few outer leaves off each one. That gave me enough for a salad every other day and worked quite well.
Staggering the planting might be something worth considering if you have multiple plants or the same variety. Instead of planting three tomatoes at the same time and having one colossal crop, perhaps wait two-three weeks in between planting them. That way, you'll offset the maturity of the plants and the expected harvest times.
To see what they do with their excess produce, let me mention some of our keen gardeners @mich1972, @LisasGarden, @bergs and @Andy_J.
Mitchell
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