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Garden that feeds family of four

13 years ago

Hey all, im going to be doing a veggie garden this year and im wondering how much I should plant to keep our family of four steadily supplied with veggies this season. Im going to be planting tomatoes, cucumber, broccoli, green bell pepper, carrots, onions, and potatos, But im not sure how much of each ill need. Any suggestions appreciated.

Thanks,

Justin

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Comments (3)

memo3
13 years ago
Hey Justin,

Your question is a little vague for me to answer fully. Assuming that you are planning to can and put food by for winter is different from just having seasonal fresh produce.

For a family of four, my experience is as follows:
Tomatoes six- ten plants for the table and canning into juices, sauces, picante sauce etc.
Cucumbers four -six plants
Broccoli 20-30 plants...need to go in the ground now.
Bell peppers 6-8 plants, with plenty to chop and freeze or make into relish.
Carrots are a pain, cheaper and easier to buy but if you must...60 feet planted
onions...never enough...I plant sets and let them grow large by mounding up the soil around them as they grow. 80 feet in rows.
potatoes...1 plant for every five pounds of potatoes you will need for a year. I grow them in 5 gal. buckets and lick tubs so they are easier to dump and access the potatoes. I'm not into digging for gold.

Hope this helps
MeMo
calliope
13 years ago
I garden for two of us, but I put up as much as possible, usually three to four hundred jars for the year. I plant way more than that. A pound of green bean seed. Four hundred corn plants. Three to six dozen tomato plants. Three dozen broccoli plants. At least a dozen jalapeno pepper plants for salsas. I do cabbage, switching varieties and succession planting all season.....twelve heads at a crack, and popping a new plant in as soon as I harvest an old one. Two twelve foot rows of loose leaf lettuce. Six to twelve cukes minimum. You can never have too many onions, like the last poster said. I have a couple hundred sweet onion plants started now, and also shall be planting an equivalent amount of shallots, since they keep all winter to use when the onions are spent.

I don't always plant spuds, but when I do, as many as I have room to pop in. Fifty or sixty starts, anyway. I ony do about a thirty foot row of carrots. I also do other stuff, like sweet corn, sweet potatoes, celery etc. It's easy for me to calculate the amount I'll need, by knowing the yield from experience and how many jars I'll need to last a year. It can be so weather and critter related too. Some years you harvest more than others.

You didn't mention how much ground you have available to use, or how much time you are willing to spend tending a garden.
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jonas302
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Hard to say you are going to have to learn from experience of what your family like to eat and what your harvest storage plans are if you have good cold basement or root cellar makes a difference with potatoes and onions I like to put in around 25 pounds of potatoes and several pounds of onion sets Lots of tomatoes are nice you can make so many products out of them 20-30 plants of the canning varieties

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