What a given plant produces in a season is dependent on many, many factors, including weather, how well you water and care for them, the quality of your compost, the variety of plant, how long your season is, and actually the genetic quality each individual seed. It's not something you could really include in a book.

(Even seed producers give wishy-washy terms like "large yield" instead of pounds produced, because there's just no way to know.)

csarfield...you bought the book and your disappointed that it doesnt' talk about how much of what crop to plant? Unbelievable...its all over the place in there...you sure your reading the right book?....you plant what you want to eat or grow, and it tells you how many of each plant to put into each square...

I agree with csarsfield, that is one thing that is strangely absent from the book. It is very difficult for a beginning gardener to know how many squares of some veggies to plant per person. For instance, I think lettuce and carrots are easy to figure out. I'll harvest the whole plant so it is easy to visulize. Tomatoes, cucumbers, peas, and beans I have no idea. I'll just guess and adjust next year depending on the yield this year.

I understand that plant yield is highly variable, but some general guidelines would be nice, maybe just for the best case scenerio - using great compost, mild weather, perfect care, and planting varieties recommended for your area. Then we could adjust our calculations from there. I would love to see some info saying something like "under best conditions: plant 3 tomato plants per person for a light harvest" or something like that.

I asked lots of questions of my nursery and my local county extension agent but most of their info was for row planting and it was difficult to translate to squarefoot gardening. Same for the info on the internet.

snibb, if you could point me to some page numbers in the book where I can find how many tomato plants per person to put in, I would be grateful. Maybe I overlooked it. I use the 2005 edition.

billybobbob,

The problem is, because crops are exceptionally variable, any number given would be wrong. Would you prefer Mel gave you a wrong number that was too high, or too low?

Yields depend entirely on time, conditions, species and weather. No book can (and as far as I know, no book does) tell you expected harvest amounts. All they can offer is a set of guidelines to maximize what you do get.

The only real way to plan harvests would be based on past history in your region, with specific varieties with specific histories. Most gardeners build this knowledge up themselves - and many of us now depend on forums like this one to learn about the results of others - although they can only tell us how their yields went, not how yours will.

queueteu...really? hhmmmm...I guess I must be dreaming when I look at page 44. This tells you what you can do in a 4X4garden if you plant in the springtime. By the time you are ready to plant your summer garden, you start all those things. I guess I must be dreaming of what it says on pages 41-42 as well-"how much is enough"....as far as not being able to tell others what to expect...well, what can I say? Several of my neighbors who SFG get pretty much what I get...billy...just plant what you want to eat and follow the instructions on these pages...you will be fine...no need to make it so difficult....

I JUST had the same conversation with myself on my blog today. I don't know if I want 8 SF of bush beans and carrots. Do I really need 128 carrots? I didn't decide. I've got more squares to fill but I've got time in my succession planting.

I too thought about the part where Mel told you what you could get from one 4x4 bed. I extrapolated that to my 130 SF of space and then took the list of veggies I wanted to grow and started planning out where they went (with companion planting guides) and how many SF of each I wanted. Since then I've refigured what I wanted and added more radishes since they are small and it's a single use plant. Ringing radish seeds around the edge of a broccoli square is a good way to use the space.

For 1,000 pounds of tomatoes, you'll need at least a dozen to a score of plants. That's a guess since this is my first year planting tomatoes. Oh, and get determinates if you want them all to mature at about the same time for canning.

For potatoes, check out my potato bin page. I think 8 bins would suffice, maybe more. I've read that you can get upwards of 100 pounds per bin, but I somehow doubt that. I hope that 8 to 10 bins with one pound of seed potatoes each should produce 600 pounds of potatoes from a Build-As-You-Grow bin.

Good luck!

Here is a link that might be useful: Sinfonian's garden adventure!

Snibb,

I did read that portion of the book. It gave some general box number based on number of people in the family. However, the only other books I read on gardening would tell you for example if you want to plant tomatoes, you would plant 3-5 plants per person in a row 6-12 ft. (Vegetable planting guide, Joy of Gardening Dick Raymond). Even this is not completely helpful, but is more than is in the Square Foot Garden book. In this case I had a goal amount in pounds and only wanted to know approximately how much I would need to plant. I also did not know if the yield per plant is less in a sq. ft. garden.

Sinfonian,

Thank you for the advice. You were extremely helpful. I am considering using used tires stacked one on top of the other for my potato bins. Thanks again for the help.

yeah, sure thing...

Csarfield, no problem, that's a ton of tomatoes and potatoes... I can't fathom it but I'm impressed you're doing it.

As for tires over bins, the only problem I see is if you get regular sized tires they won't have the volume of space for growing that bins would. You would need tons of tires, probably litteraly for 12-15 stacks 5 high at least.

Good luck and enjoy the process!

Here is a link that might be useful: Sinfonian's garden adventure!

how bout tellin us which garden books give this kind of info?
i have not seen one either

darkcloud,

At the risk of getting shouted down again, there really aren't any. Local agricultural publications can give approximate yields per acre in a given climate and region, but individual gardens just provide too much variability.

In the "All New Square Foot Gardening" (2005), Mel has a discussion beginning on p. 41 about how to plan the amount of space.

He says (p. 41) "If you're figuring a SFG for an adult, remember that:
"1) One 4x4 Square Foot Garden box (equal to 16 square feet) will supply enough produce to make a salad for one person every day of the growing season.
"2) One more 4x4 box will supply the daily supper vegetables for that person.
"3) Just one more 4x4 box will supply that person with extra of everything for preserving, special crops, showing off, or giving away.
"So, each adult needs one, two, or three large boxes of 4x4, depending on how much they want."

Somewhat later in this same discussion, he recommends using 3x3 for kids (4x4 for teens) and deriving the total square footage for your own family.

For a separate method of calculation, Mel says, "According to surveys of homeowners, the average conventional single-row garden measures 20 feet wide by 35 feet long, which equals 700 square feet. To grow the same amount, a Square Foot Garden will need only 20 percent or one-fifth of that growing space to equal 140 square feet."

If you've been successfully gardening with traditional rows, it seems that you could divide by five and build enough boxes for the resulting square footage, making sure that no boxes were more than 4 feet wide (and, Mel recommends elsewhere, no longer than 16 feet to avoid the temptation of stepping INTO the box to get to the other side).

Does this information help?

Cynthia H.
El Cerrito, CA (S.F. Bay Area)

Another source for some of this info on yields and amount actually produced is the Ball Blue Book of Preserving..basically the canner's primary source. It has a great table in there that gives rough estimates of how much to plant for what sort of yield and how much in the way of cans for canning or freezing that will make. Geared toward 6 people but it is easy math.

You might want to check that out.

Here is a link that might be useful: Growing Human - Adventures of a Novice Gardener

Part of the problem is what one family will eat differs from another family. Example, last summer we had 10 cucumber plants, and I had planned on learning how to make pickles, however the kids also discovered they really really like fresh cukes, and every single one was eaten the day it was ripe. This year trying for 16 plants, and they still may not be enough.
Tomatoes are hard to gauge as different varities produce different quanity in different gardens. Example, my tigerella made a whole whopping 3 tomatoes last summer, and my morgage lifter was covered, they were 2 ft apart, equal care, huge result differance. If there's a variety that did well for you in the past, go with that, but saying "10 LB per plant" just isn't possiable to guarentee.
Here I plant 3 tomatoes, 4 cuke vines, 3 sweet peppers, 1 hot pepper, 1 fruit tree/shrub (outside garden so not to shade it) 1 squash, 2 melons, all of that is PER Person. That what covers maybe 80% of our veggies come summer/fall, any extra squash or peppers are frozen for cooking in winter, the tomatoes, cukes and melons are eaten on the day they ripen. The fruit trees are staggered in harvesting, some citrus is always riping Nov> March, then strawberries and plums for summers. But that is what WE eat, if you don't like cucumbers or adore hot peppers, than it won't work for your family.
I'm going to say limit yourself to 6 squares of 4X4 and a potato bin or two, unless you have consistant help (my 8 year old does help water and look for bugs daily, but he's not able to train vines, etc). Now if you work from home (as I do) and can check on the plants more often, then you can add as needed, but it's better to start small, than to overwhelm yourself the first year.

I'll ditto checking out the Blue Book if preservation for year-round eating is part of your goal.

Likewise, it is better to start small and work up. Not only have my planting ratios changed dramatically since my first year, but so have my planting patterns and even how I build beds and trellises.

According to the book "High-Yield Gardening" one tomato plant produces about 3 tomatoes, or 1 lb per week, one potato plant produces 2.75 lb per season, one cucumber produces 2 cukes, or 1 lb per week, snap beans 1/16 lb per plant per week for 3 weeks, peas same as beans but for 4 weeks, summer squash 3 squash or 1 lb/per week (doesn't say how many weeks).
"The Big Book of Gardening Skills" says 5 tomato plants per person, spaced 12-24" apart; 50' row of potatoes per person, 33 plants per row spaced at 9-12". I know it says "row", but it can still be used as a guide. Of course, they don't give any indication of how much they think one person eats...
Results can and will vary greatly, but maybe this will help a little.

I've seen lots of sites on the internet giving figures for how much to plant per person. You're likely to find them if you Google "planting guides". Take a look at these:

Plants per Person

Jeff Cox's Plants per Person (scroll down to page 39)

Virginia Planting Guide

You just need to convert the spacing to SFG once you decide how much you need or want to grow.