By Aaron Lancaster
University of Georgia

Food banks and outreach services get many donations during the holidays. And they greatly appreciate them. But giving perishable foods such as produce from your garden requires some advance planning and coordination.

Donations of gardeners' produce come mainly two ways: salvaged and planned.

The first is the most common. Gardeners find themselves with an abundance of produce. They don't want to waste it, so they donate the surplus to local outreach organizations.

Sometimes, a lack of communication between donors and recipients leaves gardeners feeling their help isn't welcome. Those who donate surplus crops too often delay their harvest, too, until they're sure they won't use it themselves. During the delay, the produce can overripen and become useless.

A better way

Planned efforts, in which gardeners plant crops they intend to donate from the start, can have greater success. Crops that are planted to be donated only are easier to manage.

Plant-a-Row for the Hungry, a nationwide, grassroots campaign, encourages gardeners to plant extra and donate the produce to local food banks, soup kitchens and service organizations to help feed hungry people.

PAR's success hinges on its people-helping-people approach. It proves year after year that every person can make a difference in the community.

Last year, PAR gardeners donated more than 1.3 million pounds of produce, providing meals for more than 5.5 million needy recipients. You can learn more about PAR on-line at www.gwaa.org/par/.

Plan aheead

Here are the best steps to follow to successfully donate part of your garden. If you follow these steps, the people you're trying to help will get the produce that's most useful to them.

• Decide how much space you want to donate to the project.
• List the crops you can grow in this space.
• Contact the outreach group to see which crop they need or can use most effectively.
• Find out when and how much to donate at one time.
• Ask how the recipient prefers to get the crop -- washed, trimmed, etc.
• If you're growing storage crops like squash, potatoes, onions or carrots, find out the most and least the recipient can store at one time.
• Plant and grow the crops on your list that fit the recipients' needs.
• Harvest and deliver the crop.

Where to take it

To find the nearest organizations and determine their need, call 1-800-GLEAN-IT (1-800-453-2648). This is a toll-free hotline of the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the National Hunger Clearinghouse.

Or check on the Internet:

• Second Harvest (www.secondharvest.org/)
• USDA Food, Nutrition and Consumer Services (www.fns.usda.gov/fncs/)
• United Way (www.efsp.unitedway.org/)

You can find help in selecting and growing vegetables that do well in your area at your county University of Georgia Extension Service and on-line at www.ces.uga.edu/pubs/pubsubj.html#Horticulture.

(Aaron Lancaster is a Bibb County Extension agent with the University of Georgia College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.)