Here it gets a bit complicated. Nurseries typically sell vegetable seedlings in packs of four or six - segmented plastic trays with one plant in each segment, which is what we gardeners immediately think of when we hear the term six-pack. It is expected that each of those seedlings will have grown past the point where that are at most risk, so each plant will survive, given adequate soil and care. I can't speak to your growing conditions, but here in Maine if I practice my technique on tomatoes, I can plant seeds in February, start harvesting in June, and stop in October, and expect each plant to give me 20 lbs. of tomatoes. If I plant cabbage, about 75 days after I plant seed, I get one cabbage per seed, and it's done. After harvesting cabbage that was planted in the beginning of the season, I still have some warm weather ahead of me, so I can plant a fast maturing summer crop or a longer maturing winter crop in the space where the cabbage previously grew. The tomatoes, which I grew under plastic to prolong my harvest, will be pulled in October or November, so I won't be able to plant a long-maturity-date crop there, because although things will survive in the greenhouse in winter, very few will actually grow, because of the limitations of lower temperatures and reduced hours of sunlight. Shorter days = less photosynthesis = less rapid growth. Most plants produce fruit via a complicated biochemical process related to the number of hours of light that they receive - this is an evolutionary adaptation that ensures that seeds are produced at the time of year when they are most likely to survive - it is rather complicated - but that is why plants have various growth cycles and seasons. One carrot seed = one carrot, but one chili pepper plant = 25 chilies. On the other hand, one carrot plant, allowed to go to seed, might produce 400 seeds, but a chili pepper plant might only produce 200 (these are just meant as examples, not based on fact - I don't save many seeds). The reason it's important to plant a lot of seeds is that there are a certain percentage that will not germinate, some will be lost as seedlings, some will be lost during the growing process, etc. As your experience grows, that mortality rate drops dramatically, but those losses in the beginning make you aware of why certain things are done a certain way - it's much more effective than simply being told what to do. One of the best ways to see the whole process is to plant radishes. 1 seed = 1 radish. They will, in the right conditions, germinate in about 4 days and be ready to harvest in 3 or 4 weeks. If you like radishes, you buy a big bag of seeds, and every week you plant as many radishes as you think you will eat in a week. In one month, you have a weeks' worth of radishes ready to pick and eat, and every week after that you have more. You pick all you want, when you want - you can pick them as big as the end of your little finger, or wait till they're the size of a golf ball (or a softball, with some varieties). You can grow them in red, pink, purple, white, black, or green on the outside and pink on the inside, and some can weigh several pounds. At a certain point in the radish growth cycle, the root starts to get woody, and a stem develops from the rosette of leaves. A few weeks later, little white flowers develop, and guess what? They're delicious! They taste like radishes, and are, in my opinion, even better than radishes in an elegant salad, but don't eat them all, because once the flowers get pollinated, they develop into little seed pods, which look like miniature beans - and they're delicious too! There are some varieties of radish that are grown specifically for the seed pod, which in some cuisines is pickled. Almost every vegetable has this enormous diversity of varieties - there are hundreds of different tomatoes, and thousands of lettuces. Many of them are not offered as plants because the demand isn't there, or because the plant won't transplant well, or because, as with some radishes, they grow so quickly the retailer won't risk having them ripen in the six-pack before he has a chance to sell it, but buying by seed gives you the opportunity to select from tens of thousands of vegetable varieties, most of which you cannot buy in a grocery store. Let's talk broccoli and cauliflower. These are closely related plants, and can even be cross bred. They are grown, ordinarily, to produce one large head per plant. Broccoli is green (usually, it can be purple) cauliflower is white (but it can be orange, or green, or purple). With broccoli, after you cut off the big head, you can let the plant grow, and where the leaf meets the stem you will get a new smaller head. If the plant is grown well, the number of smaller heads can equal, in weight, the size of the one large head, effectively doubling the yield of the plant. If you planted the broccoli at the right time, it may be worthwhile to do that, but, depending on the season, it may be to your advantage to remove that plant and replace it with another crop that will give you a different yield more appropriate to the season. As an example, you could probably plant broccoli now. It is predicted to be mature in 60 days. The variety you plant has only fair side-shoot production, so you would plan to replace that plant in the middle of April. In April, it will be nice and warm, so you can start planting summer crops in the garden, and cucumbers would be a good choice... they don't respond well to transplanting, they don't share diseases with broccoli, and they will mature in 75 days, producing 15 or more cucumbers on a well-grown plant. Now you have a plant that will be in that space for 90 days. It will give you possibly 8 pounds of cucumbers over 2 weeks’ time. In the beginning of August, that plant will be done producing, so you take it out. It's too late to put another summer crop there - the days are getting shorter, and it will be too cool for good ripening and flavor development for some things. On the other hand, radicchio, which likes warm germinating conditions, and forms good heads with nice color in cooler ones, and takes about 70 days to be ready, would be a great crop to plant where the cucumbers were. Even better, in the space it took to grow one broccoli plant that gave you one head, and one cucumber plant that gave you 15 cucumbers, you can grow 4 radicchio, with a few carrots and radishes to keep them company. After you harvest the radicchio it is approaching the coolest time of the year, so your options are more limited, but it happens that spinach will germinate and grow well in cool conditions, is ready to pick in 35 days, and can be harvested almost continuously through the winter. Even better, spinach tastes best in February and March, unlike any you can buy at a grocery. When it's done... time to plant broccoli - except now you have a lot more experience, so you're tempted by Brussels sprouts, or Romanesco cauliflower, or Belgian endive. The point of all this is to say that it is very difficult to estimate yield, because it is so variable. It depends on what and when you plant, how you manage your succession planting, what the bugs and deer do, frosts, hail... it never ends. The easiest way to deal with this, your first year, is to make a map of the garden, and a short list of plants you know that you want to grow. On your list, lettuce, carrots, and spinach can be planted now. Yu can buy lettuce seedlings in six-packs so if you eat a lot of lettuce, get a few six-packs to transplant, so you can harvest them in a few weeks, but get packages of seeds for all three, so you can plant a short row of seeds every week, which will give you a short row to harvest every week. When it starts getting warmer, those plants won't do as well, so put the rest of the seeds in a cool dark dry place and save them until fall, when it is time to start planting the cool weather crops again. This year, you should buy most of your plants as seedlings started in six-packs, but those will not be as easily available in summer or fall, so you need to buy seed for the crops you want to plant later - the good varieties will sell out, and you will have less selection if you wait. This is all pretty detailed and complicated, but it will make a lot of sense once you get started. That is why I emphasize the importance of defining why you are gardening - if it is to save money, you will want to grow different varieties than if it is for gourmet produce, or to have a colorful backyard, or to be able to serve home-grown at dinner parties - and you CAN do all three - but that decision makes it easier to narrow down all the choices that make it seem so overwhelming.

jonfrum, "Why? Are you a farmer?" No. I'm not a farmer. I came across those sites while searching for certain varieties of a couple of vegetables. I found the sites interesting, although not directly helpful to my gardening. "The hybrid seed sold to gardeners - people who visit this site - are usually not the same as that grown by farmers." That's right. I thought my comments indicated that but maybe not. I found very few, if any, "home gardener" varieties on those "farmer" sites. "...there's nothing 'naturally' good about old varieties. Some are fantastic, and others went off the market for very good reasons." Technically, yes. But the good ones have stood the test of time for very good reasons. We no longer have the ones nobody cared enough about to maintain them year after year for many decades. Some of the newer hybrids will disappear eventually too. "And the heirloom Cherokee Purple was my worst variety." I don't doubt that it was -- according to your criteria. But Cherokee Purple is very popular, so there must be something to like about it. It's good that we have so many varieties to choose from, both hybrid and open pollinated. "Seed companies spend a lot of money and years of effort trying to come up with a new variety that people will buy." Yes, they do. However, the goals of breeding are different for the home gardener than for the mass market grower. You and I do not pick our tomatoes green for shipping to distant warehouses where they are gassed to "ripen" them as needed. "They aren't out to destroy the planet's seed stock and take over the world, Dr Evil style." I agree with you. I wasn't trying to make that argument. Occasionally a popular hybrid will be taken off the market however, for one reason or another. And, since it can be produced only by the owner of the parent varieties, it is lost to the home gardener. I grow some hybrids but often prefer open pollinated ones because of the qualities which others before me have found desirable and caused them to be preserved for a long time. Yellow crookneck squash for example, was grown long before the pilgrims arrived and, IMO, tastes better than any other summer squash. Some of the best beans are pole beans, which are not grown commercially because they cannot be mechanically harvested. It's no problem for me to harvest them manually. In fact, it is easier on my back to harvest pole beans than bush beans. :-) Seed saving, possible only with open pollinated varieties, is important to me also. Cost of seeds is no longer negligible either at $3.00 or more per small packet. And seed for some of my favorite varieties is available only from seed savers. Jim

Walking Stick Kale (B. oleracea var. longata) and Tree Collards (Brassica oleracea -Acephala Group) are different plants. The Tree Collard rarely goes to seed. When it does its seed is not true to type. Walking Stick Kale does go to seed and can be propagated from seed, however you would want to avoid cross pollination to get true seed. Here is a response to some questions I asked a master gardener from the UK in regards to germinating some old Walking Stick Kale seeds: (I also asked what they could potentially cross pollinate with, and if Tree Collards were really kale and was the Walking Stick Kale really a cabbage) Here is what I was told: Kale Walking Stick seeds should germinate fairly well, brassicas can lose seedling vigour over time and usually show as yellowing or stunted seedlings on emergence. However, hopefully you will obtain sufficient plants. Walking Stick is a Brassica "B. oleracea var. longata", a selection of ‘Thousand Head’ fodder/ marrow stem kale grown on Jersey. Collards are hugely popular in the USA whereas in Britain we have tended to grow ‘spring cabbage/ bagged greens’ for generations. There are similarities as both are loose leaf, slow hearting with winter hardiness. Breeders are actively working on F1 hybrids. Collards are also Brassica oleracea and would be classified as a cabbage. Cabbages and kales (also Brussels sprouts and cauliflower) will cross pollinate, as biennials flowering and seeding the second year after sowing. Unless individual Brassica oleracea subjects are caged prior to flowering then they can cross pollinate if flowering at the same time. Caging plants and introducing fly maggots/pupae from your fishing tackle shop to emerge as blowflies which perform a marvellous job in pollination.

dumpling wrappers, potstickers, dim sum, and wontons are not synonymous. Dumpling wrappers, almost always round but occasionally square, are thicker than wonton wrappers, which are always square. potstickers are dumpling wrappers filled with a rich filling, folded over and pinched and then cooked in a very special way -- they are put onto a hot pan with a bit of oil, seared to brown and then covered in a bit of liquid to braise under a cover until the liquid is all gone and the dumplings literally "stick" to the pot. dim sum is a collective phrase for a great many "appetizer-like" foods, some of which are "dumplings" but not exactly the kind of dumplings made with dumpling wrappers. wontons refers to the thin square wrappers or to the wrapper with filling. They can be small or large and they can be boiled/steamed or deep-fried. The extra large ones are best truly steamed over gentle heat. For deep-frying, the smaller, the better. Here's my favorite "dumpling filling" recipe to put into wontons or dumpling wrappers (given to me by a little Chinese grandmother about 25 years ago in L.A.; true): DUMPLING FILLING Makes 12 to 24 1 pound ground pork -- shoulder 1/4 pound shrimp -- finely chopped 1 small bok choy -- chopped 1 egg 1 teaspoon cornstarch salt -- to taste 1/2 teaspoon sugar 2 tablespoons sesame oil 1 tablespoon water 1 teaspoon ginger root -- grated 2 stalks green onion -- chopped Chop bok choy coarsely and cook in boiling water for 5 minutes. Drain by placing in cheese cloth and squeezing out all water. Chop finely. Combine pork, shrimp, egg, cornstarch, salt, sugar, sesame oil, water, and ginger. Mix well. Add bok choy and chopped green onions. Put small teaspoon-fulls into won ton wrappers or larger tablespoon-fulls into dumpling wrappers. Boil them gently in water or chicken stock until floating. Dumplings can be boiled (steamed) or braised (fried). Or you can freeze them stuffed raw for later use. Joe