What do you do with the produce from your garden/allotment?

[MereDintofPandiculation]

Do you

a) display it on the kitchen work surface for the family to admire?
b) photograph it and put it on facebook/mumsnet or other social media?
c) put it straight away into fridge, freezer or dinner? - it's important to use it as fresh as possible

I realise today that I'm firmly in camp a). If nothing else, it feels good to me to see it all displayed together. I even dig out DH and bring him to admire it (I feel no guilt - this morning he said to me "I'm going to show you something, I don't want any criticism, I want nothing less than unbounded admiration" )

D) None of above.
Cook with it, make preserves and chutney, freeze, trade with neighbours.

I do A 😂.

I'm actually shockingly bad at actually remembering to use it in some way.
The same with pick your own stuff.

@LemonRoses

D) None of above. Cook with it, make preserves and chutney, freeze, trade with neighbours.

Isn't that c? (OK I forgot to put an option for other ways of preserving).

I accept that trading is a 4th option.

I can give some advice here....
Do not a) name the produce or b) personify it ( guilty of sticking googly eyes on here)

So that you get to the point where you cant eat it
" nooo you can't eat Annabel the courgette mummy"

Etc

That aside, the tomatoes and cucumbers get eaten straight away. Like sweets for my kids.
Fruit tends to get frozen, then goes into breakfast or baking ... or gin...
Herbs tend to die before any harvest

D- give it to family and friends to eat, along with cooking with it myself. Why leave it on display for family to admire whilst slowly rotting!?!

Any surplus I give to friends and neighbours.

I photograph and send to family, it I don’t go as far as posting on Facebook etc! But I pick to eat, so it gets photographed on the way from the soil to the coking pot!

I do A B and C.

Dig up/pick

Display on side rustically.

Send photos of it looking lovely and earthy to family / social media (usually with no response)

Eat for tea.

All three!

If I feel impressed with myself I take a photo

We eat it, make jam, give some away. I always freeze a big tub of raspberries so we can have breakfast smoothies on Christmas and New Years day

Where on side are you displaying a significant mass of harvested fruit and vegetables? Is it not rather odd to have 15Kg of Bramleys, 5Kg of Victoria's and a horde of tomatoes, courgette, leeks and celeriac along with foraged mushrooms and donated sack of potatoes and carrots?
Do they not deteriorate quickly like this? Would it not be better to paint a still life and display that?

C) It all gets processed (washed, chopped, peeled as appropriate) and used, stored or frozen asap.

Unless it's flowers. They get displayed. Obviously.

@LemonRoses

Where on side are you displaying a significant mass of harvested fruit and vegetables? Is it not rather odd to have 15Kg of Bramleys, 5Kg of Victoria's and a horde of tomatoes, courgette, leeks and celeriac along with foraged mushrooms and donated sack of potatoes and carrots? Do they not deteriorate quickly like this? Would it not be better to paint a still life and display that?

Oh, I don’t leave it to rot. I display it for 24 hours or less. I wouldn’t display donated stuff. But I’m quite happy to cover the whole work surface with fruit and veg.

We definitely display. There is something extremely satisfying about bringing the fruits (and vegetables) of your labour's home for general admiration.

I also post photos of the resulting preserves especially if we have achieved a goodly quantity.

I wonder if this is what all those cave paintings were really about. Dave, the caveman, droning on about the hunt then making the whole family come out to admire the wooly mammoth carcass he's dragged home.

We definitely display. There is something extremely satisfying about bringing the fruits (and vegetables) of your labour's home for general admiration. Yes! "Look how good I am at feeding my family"

I don’t display but only because I live on my own. I do take photos and put them on Instagram but only really so that I can compare with the previous year’s hauls (I don’t have many followers). I could tell this year that I was already eating last year’s outdoor tomatoes but this year they are nowhere near ready.

C. but this year has been a bit embarrassing in terms of produce. I managed a few sprigs of purple sprouting (planted last year) but that was it, the slugs though are looking very healthy!

I am guilty of posing the harvest, artfully draping onion leaves, making sure that the courgettes are showing etc

I could tell this year that I was already eating last year’s outdoor tomatoes Did a double take on this before I read the rest of the sentence! I keep a five year diary type thing for that. So each year when I think “the winter flowering Viburnum is out and it’s still July!” I look in the diary and found I’ve had exactly the same thought every year since 1995.

Gnome doesn’t everyone pose their harvest for display?

MereDintofPandiculation phew! I was worried I was the only person who actually posed the harvest rather than just plonking it down and taking the picture!

I do photograph it sometimes, but usually outside at the allotment. Once home it's cleaned, prepped cooked. Icassionalkyni have to devote half a day or a day to preserving a glut (tomatoes so prolific this year that it took me 3 days to make a variety of sauces & preserves. This year gluts are simply not an issue. If we get some beans or salad it's eaten pretty much immediately. It's been a tough year for growing stuff.

Eat it fresh off the vine/plant. or pickle it. Or trade it with gardening friends. We had too many courgettes last week, so I pickled them, and enjoyed the pickle. Within 24 hours, husband asked if we had any veggies he could prepare to go with our dinner. I harvested a handful of runner beans.

I take photos sometimes, but we mostly eat it, then remember we really should take the odd photo for records/posterity (I keep a gardening diary).

A lot of our soft fruit gets preserved, turned into jelly or turned into some sort of alcohol!