Once you have harvested vegetables and fruit, it’s time to enjoy them. Although this can be quite boring after 10 bunches of tomatoes. So it’s time to cropswap! Now that you know the basics, it’s time for the fun part! Follow our simple step-by-step plan and before you know it, you’re well on your way to being self-sufficient.
To expand your own fruit and vegetable stock you can start with a ‘cropswap’. Below we share some ways to share your harvest, and get other kinds of fruits and vegetables.
Different swap options
Neighborhood Day
Organize a street or neighborhood party and celebrate the harvest! Take at least 5 or more products from your own vegetable garden and start swapping them. A real vegetable garden swap, in other words a cropswap.
Dinner party
Enjoy a dinner full of harvested products. Let your friends bring their own fruit and vegetables, and organise a dinner party!
Summer picnic
Also nice, organize a big picnic for children. Let everyone bring their own fruit and vegetables.
To make the picnic even more fun, you can give children the task of making the most beautiful dishes. Laughter guaranteed! Make sure that both vegetables and fruit are already cut. This way you avoid unnecessary accidents.
What else can you do with remaining fruit and vegetables?
Don’t you have neighbors or friends with a vegetable garden? Convince them! That way you can have one big cropswap together next year. What can you do with your harvest for now? We’ve come up with some great ideas for that too.
Strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and blackberries
- Jam: easy to make, long lasting. So you can enjoy your well-deserved harvest for an extra long time.
- Quark or yogurt: mix some red fruits and add them to quark or yogurt. You can also crush the red fruits in advance. This will add more flavour and give the dessert a nice pink colour.
- Smoothie: healthy, tasty and simple. What more could you want? The best thing about a smoothie is that you can add ingredients as you like. For a thick smoothie you should use yoghurt, a more drinkable smoothie is made with milk.
Tomatoes
- Tomato soup: maybe a bit obvious, but nothing better than homemade tomato soup. Also delicious in combination with carrot or pumpkin.
- Tomato puree: delicious on pizza’s! All you need is some water and tomatoes.
- Salad caprese: a starter that you probably often order in a restaurant, but actually never make at home. Now you have enough tomato left for this simple, but tasty, starter! All you need is some basil and mozzarella. Cut the mozzarella and tomatoes into nice slices and enjoy.
Carrots
- Snack: carrots are delicious as a snack. Especially for children. Cut the carrots into small pieces and close them in a tupperware container. This means that no oxygen is added, so that the carrots remain wonderfully fresh.
- Carrot soup: with less than 10 ingredients you can make the most delicious carrot soup.
Our favorite recipe for carrot soup:
- Cut the winter carrots (4 pieces) into large pieces.
- Peel one onion and cut it into small pieces.
- Then squeeze out two cloves of garlic and finely chop them as well.
- Bring water to the boil. Put a little oil in a saucepan and fry the onion and garlic in the meantime.
- Add 1 tablespoon of curry powder together with the winter pennies and the boiling water.
- Add a (vegetable) stock cube to this mixture.
- Bring the contents to the boil and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes.
- Puree the contents and season with salt and pepper. That’s it!
Pumpkin
- Pumpkin Soup: Can’t you get enough of all that soup? Then you can turn the pumpkin into a separate pumpkin soup! You can also add the pumpkin to the carrot and/or tomato soup.
- Halloween decoration: all the remaining pumpkins can be hollowed out and used for Halloween. Make it a party with your children!
