The first year I grew zucchini, I planted four of them. Anyone who has grown zucchini is laughing right now. By July I was leaving them on doorsteps after dark, like a very wholesome burglar.

That’s how the porch table started. An old card table, a hand-lettered sign that says Free from the garden, take what you’ll use, and whatever I couldn’t eat that week. Some days it’s cucumbers. Some days it’s a jar of zinnias. In September it is always tomatoes, a ridiculous number of tomatoes.

A garden makes more than you need, on purpose

Plants are generous by nature. One tomato plant can give you dozens of pounds in a good year. A single packet of lettuce seed holds more salad than a family can eat. A hosta divides into three, and then nine. The garden seems built to overflow, and I’ve come to see that overflow as an invitation.

Giving it away feels different from giving almost anything else. It isn’t something you bought. It’s something you grew from a seed, with your own two hands and a whole season of attention. People can feel that. A neighbor once told me the tomato I left her tasted like her mother’s garden. I think about that every time I fill the table.

Saving seeds and passing them on

A few years ago I started saving seeds from the plants that did best for me: the bean that shrugged off a dry August, the tomato that ripened before our first frost. Each year those seeds become a little better suited to my particular climate and soil.

Open-pollinated and heirloom varieties are the easiest place to start. Beans, peas, lettuce, and tomatoes are forgiving for beginners. I dry the seeds on paper plates, tuck them into small envelopes, and label each one with the variety, the year, and a note about how it grew. Then I give most of them away.

It moves me to know that a bean my neighbor’s father grew decades ago is now climbing a trellis in my yard, and that some of its seeds will end up in a stranger’s garden next spring.

This year’s saved seeds, ready to give away.

Sharing plants through the seasons

Perennials are made for giving. Daylilies, hostas, irises, sedum, ornamental grasses, and mint (with a friendly warning) all need dividing every few years anyway. When to do it depends on where you live:

• In cold zones, 3 to 5, I divide in early spring, so the new clumps have a full season to settle in before winter.
• In the middle zones, 6 and 7, early fall works beautifully: warm soil, cooler air, and plenty of time to root.
• In warm zones, 8 to 10, fall and winter are the gentle seasons for dividing, once the summer heat breaks.

I pot the divisions in whatever containers I have, write the name on a stick, and set them on the porch table. They’re always the first things to go.