Network Gardening

If you have ever had a zucchini plant, or apple tree, you understand the dilemma. Zucchinis coming out your ears. During high growing season you recieve many more ripe zucchinis on your plant than you and your family could ever eat. This usually ends up as a bring a cardboard box full or (insert overly abundant in season fruit/vegetable here) to work, church, or just ditch them on an unsuspecting person's porch.

It could be that your home has one edible-product producing plant, and that you just get so dang sick of eating them, but really don't have the time of the know-how to make a multi-facetted garden that gives of small amounts of what you need on a regular basis.

Perhaps you have a yard full or grass, and you don't do anything with this grass, why not grow a fruit tree, many are ver low maintainence, and you're not really doing much with the garden space.

I guess part of the point here is driving through a suburban neighborhood, (in the US mostly) where there is lots of space between the houses, and lots of green (grass) that isn't actually very useful, and is rather a pain in the butt to maintain. There is a better way to use this space, how could we encourage this.

For environmental reasons, it is better to eat locally grown, in-season foods, but when the land is covered in grass, who's growing locally. Locally could be your, or your neighbors yard.

What if there were a website for garden-sharing. Or a store, or a market, we'll call it a system. Where people can bring their overabundance and trade or give-away the gardening-extras, and to encourage at home gardening in the first place.

The website could arrange neighborhoods of plants, on neighbor could have zucchinis, the other apples, the other peppers, another herbs. You get the picture, each neighbor takes care of one plant that their "good at" and shares the edible-products.

A store could be arranged for exchanging of goods, like a second hand CD store, in terms of fruit and veggies. You bring in what you don't want and get a credit for it. You can then go pick out more useful edibles, or save the credit for when there are fewer veggies growing in your garden, to replace what you've dropped off. Other's could shop there, it could be a central point for locally-grown goods in the area.

A network could be built up for helping newbies grow. Helping them assess what will grow well where they are, giving them tips on figuring out how to grow particular plants. Or showing them combination of things that grow well in the same environment. Also encouraging them to focus on learning how to grow a specific plant, before they just head-first into a full fledged garden. Figure out a certain plant one year, the next year add another to your reportoire.