What do you do with your excess

Sorry, not in Wales. Also any excess produce goes to my neighbours. The lady next door who is on her own, the couple up the road who used to have an allotment near mine but had to give up because of health problems.

I don't want to rain on your parade, but if someone isn't using all their allotment, they should perhaps give it up to someone who will ?

I don't think it's a bad idea. As Two Sheds says, anyone who isn't using their plot to capacity should think about either giving it up, sharing it, or going for a half plot. Having said that, yes quite often people will have a surplus when suddenly all the courgettes are ready and all their friends are crossing the street to avoid them because they simply can't face another box full. A scheme which collected the excess and redistributed it might work, but I'm afraid it would have a couple of problems. 1) if my courgettes (or whatever) are going mad and producing far faster than me, my extended family and friends can eat them, then there's a good chance that so are everyone else's and you might find yourself trying to give away tons of one thing rather than a nice selection. 2) the things that are passed to you will be things which don't freeze well and can't be easily stored in any other way so, again, the variety of produce will be restricted. For these reasons you might want to think about other ways of obtaining the veg too and have surplus allotment produce as just one of a variety of sources. Perhaps your group could take on a lottie or two, then have people who would benefit come along to lend a hand in exchange for produce? That way you could grow what was wanted and people would benefit not just from the produce, but from fresh air and a bit of social contact. 'Helping' doesn't have to mean digging a bramble patch up either as elderly and disabled members could do equally useful - if somewhat less strenuous - tasks. Either that or ask lots and lots of allotmenteers to help, lots of people giving up a couple of square yards to grow you a small amount is more likely to produce results as the amount of time, expense and allotment space required of each individual would be minimal and could probably be spared by most of us for a good cause..

everything freezeable will be going in the freezer, there doesn't seem like much point for me in growing loads of stuff that won't be used up, or isn't freezable ..... i'm aiming to never have to buy another vegetable ..... so in theory i won't have any excess (though may have to get a couple of extra freezers lol

I know it is true that most can be given away to your neighbours or friends but sometimes there is just too much to give away and also it is often the case that allotments are not used to their full potential purely because if you only need to feed two people their is little point in planting for 6. I do feel there is potential to reach more people than the usual suspects when you need to off load your courgettes etc and I was hoping that some people might think it worthwile planting some extra if they were doing it anyway. I recognise the problems with keeping produce but I am literally thinking of excess going to the local vicinity virtually immediately once a week or something. It is very interesting hearing peoples comments about this please post more

I'm trying to feed a family of 5 from my allotment, with a few bits and bobs going to a friend who's a single mum. So excess doesn't exist! Anything which doesn't get eaten immediately will be frozen, jammed, chutneyed, pickled, brewed or canned.

Although at present, like most of the above, I could store by one means or another virtually all my produce. Basically I have planted only things we will eat, planned for conserving, drying or freezing plus what I give to a friend but we have had a lot of new people star on our site and some of them have worked so hard, however starting so late in the season that they have little or no hope of harvesting much.

So I must admit I have been giving some things away to the newbies to keep their moral up and let them see what they have to come if they just keep at it.

I have a half plot and didnt grow much of each veg or fruit cos I was worried I wouldnt have enough room to grow everything I wanted to. I now realise I could have put more of each in maybe at intervals and have had vacant bits. From now on I am planting more of each and will give excess to my family and friends. I have also asked for another plot.

Regarding sharing, I assume it's similar with most allotments, the rules for mine say that you cannot sublet or sub assign portions of an allotment and they only let whole 10 perch (250m^2) allotments. Although I imagine you could seek permission from the Council.