Harvesting and largely donating

I've been clearing out the garden over the past 2 weeks and have prepped and hauled 3 separate loads of greens to a donation location (first 3 photos). I've also given away a lot directly to friends and complete strangers walking by. Like, whole heads of kale. And I've eaten some. I also had my first large harvest of kohlrabi and carrots (last picture). I've still got buckets of greens to donate and a few bags of carrots. I don't think most people would want kohlrabi, and most of it was really woody anyway.

Some garden details: I'm in zone 8b, and these were planted in September and shaded by sunflowers until we slowly removed the sunflowers to acclimate them to full sun in November and December. They took off from there although the chard took a beating from winter storms. The beds are 2' (61cm) wide, and there's a total of 160 linear feet (49m) in a 20' x 20' space (6m x 6m). Everything's on drip tape, and I basically built a raised garden with wood chips to shore up the dirt. I estimate there were 40 heads of kale, 20 heads of bok choy, and 10 heads of chard. The hamper of kohlrabi and carrots probably weighed 30 lbs (13.6kg), and I'd already harvested some carrots.

Lessons learned: If you want a pretty and productive garden, mix your greens rather than do straight lines. It'll look very ornamental and meadow-y. This is a front yard garden so attractiveness is a factor. It also felt good to look at, and I think it confused some of the bugs that definitely had preferences, mostly for the kale. Not spraying pesticides also paid off. I had a lot of ladybugs and ladybug larvae eating at the aphids.

Tip: I do a lot of cut flowers, so I have water conditioner and floral food for water buckets and vases. I needed to get these plants out, so I was harvesting heads, giving a quick hose, and placing into water buckets. One head flopped, so I gave it a fresh cut and stuck in a vase with floral food which has water conditioner included. It perked up in a couple hours, so if you need to do a large harvest just to get them out of the beds fast, you might want to throw a tablet of Chrysal CVBN into your water buckets. You probably don't need a bunch of floral food. My remaining greens are currently in water buckets because I don't have fridge space, and they're holding just fine which has bought me some time to process and donate.

Oh, and because I do cut flowers and produce, I have rolls of produce bags, rubber bands, and twist ties on hand. It's probably weird, but it makes sense for me and comes in handy especially in large donation situations.

Anyway, I'll be direct seeding zinnias and dill flower and possibly sweet potatoes and watermelons for the summer. Summer growing sucks here, so I'm going to make it easy and pretty. I've got a few cut flowers like snapdragons and bachelor's buttons in the garden still, and I'm debating seeding around them to give them some more time.