Why giving is the greatest gift for any gardener

I adore apples, crunched straight from the tree, made into apple cake, or stewed then frozen so I can make a winter apple crumble in five minutes, plus 20 minutes' baking.

But even Bryan and I and the chooks and the possums can't eat a whole tree of ripe apples. While I've staggered our apple tree varieties to ripen at different times, even semi-dwarf apple trees produce lots. This can be a problem. Too many figs give you the runs. The scent of ripe fruit like apples or tomatoes attracts fruit fly, and lures stink bugs to your citrus. The birds will already have eaten most of what they want, and they prefer smaller and sourer fruit than we humans do, so there's no point depending on them.

So give them away. Take your surplus to work in a rustic basket and give them away to colleagues or even better, to one of our many local charities that feed people. Fresh lettuce, cucumbers, apples, zucchini, pumpkins etc are enormously appreciated.

Most cultures have a custom of gift giving. It makes the giver feel good, and the givee happier. It strengthens social bonds, especially if you gossip while picking fruit. Invite friends for morning tea and to pick as many apples as they like, or nashi pears or whatever else you have in surplus.

There is also the chance of "boomerangs" - you provide the raw ingredients, and the recipient gives you some of it back when they make tomato kasundi, zucchini pickle, zucchini chocolate cake (moist and lower in fat and calories but keep in covered in the fridge as it has a tendency to grow green mould), apple jelly, apple pie, French apple tart...

Being generous with your flowers is also excellent for your garden. Pick all the roses you can bear to part with, with as long a stem as possible. This is "summer pruning" and will mean that there are no dead roses harbouring black spot for next season. It will also stimulate the bushes into giving you more roses, way into the cold weather.

Hydrangeas of all kinds make superb cut flowers. Snip off their blooms with a good long stem and their bushes, too, will be stimulated to give more blooms which can then be left on the bush till they grow brown in mid to late winter.

Giving away dahlia flowers means that the plant doesn't have to use its food reserve to ripen the seed heads as the flowers die. The same goes for agapanthus or belladonna or any other bloomer in your garden. Plants produce flowers to produce seed. Foil the seed production and you'll get more blooms, and for longer.

MORE JACKIE FRENCH:

The very best people to give fruit, veg and flowers to are kids. Most kids don't know where bananas come from. Actually most adults don't, either - bananas aren't trees but enormous herbs with succulent stems instead of woody trunks. They sucker liberally, with the oldest sucker replacing the one that has fruited and is now dying.

Sadly there are few banana growers in Canberra, though the new red finger variety of banana may mean any household with a garden or a patio for a large pot can be self-sufficient in bananas, too. But as a six-year-old remarked to me happily a few weeks ago, "Now I know where apples come from" as he began to munch one. He was also totally fascinated to find that potatoes are a hidden treasure underground. I offered him a bunch of roses to take home for his mum, but he didn't think she'd be interested. "I think she'd like potatoes best."

Kids are also useful for climbing trees and tossing down the firmer kinds of ripe fruit that are otherwise out of reach, or placing some of the harvest in a bag tied around their waist - not too much, in case the branch breaks or the kid loses their balance with an unfamiliar weight.

But I wouldn't give up the image of one very grubby kid handing his mum a bag of dirty potatoes for quids.