How much do you grow?

[Marianna1988]

This is my first year gardening, and it was a pretty random, sporadic, little researched venture. So when I started, I didn't know how much each seed/plant would produce. From what I've gathered, tomatoes, zucchini, and cucumbers produce a lot (I'm kind of scared of what my harvest will be like!!). Corn does not, so I will definitely need to remember to plant less tomatoes and more corn next year.

For all your various garden plants... How many do you plant, especially if you can/freeze? How many people are you feeding?

Also, when it comes to onion and carrots, do you get one per seed? What about pumpkins and watermelon?

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[aiyana4969]

This year was a tester plot for me, we just moved to a new place and now that we're no longer renting or living on a granite ledge I can finally have a garden.

I made a 20'x40' bed and started seedlings (or attempted to, that went sooooo much better in Camp Pendleton when I planted tomato seeds and got a bunch of seedlings that I then transplanted into the flower bed. We had tomatoes up the wazoo from 3 surviving plants, gophers got the rest of the plants. We had tomatoes on everything, DH would eat them with italian dressing as a snack and we gave a ton away, eventually everyone got tomatoed out and we let the plants die and fruit rot, the rotted tomatoes sprouted new plants but by then we were retiring from the Navy and moving to Maine. I've found that with tomatoes, it really depends on where you live how prolific they are, here my seedlings all died soon after sprouting, the ones I got fromt he nursery have a few tomatoes each on them and a few more flowers. I did finally get someo f my own to sprout and not die and I just planted a huge row of them, this time I plan on canning diced tomatoes, tomato sauce, trying to make a tomato paste and canning a working barn stew that uses a lot of tomatoes. I really wish I had the San Diego sun for them.)

I'm feeding a family of 6, the 4 little girls eat like teenage boy I kid you not! These kids (on the rare chance we go to McDonalds) will eat 2 dble cheeseburgers, small fry, juice box and still ask for more, each! They range from 2-8YO.

I planted 2 rows of peas (doing great) 2 rows of spinach (started to do well then died when it got hot too quickly, same with the 2 rows of lettuce) I think a critter got my Chard, I have 4 plants left out of a row and are doing good, a row of beets planted fairly thickly because I love beetgreens, they're doing ok, 2 rows of carotts that were doing fabulous until a critter got to them, now I'm down to the equivelent of a row, a row of potatoes (we don't use many potatoes, but I wante dto see what would happen if I planted the peelings with eyes, they're doing fabulous! Potatoes will grow anywhere), 2 rows of leeks (never sprouted), 2 rows of green onions, one row from seed and one row from the roots of store bought ones (all are doing well, the ones from roots are able to be clipped every week for the wildrice dish I make), a double row of green beans (doing great) double row of wax beans (doing great), 2 rows of yellow squash (doing great), a row of green zuchini squash (doing great) a row of cucumbers (doing great) and a row of corn (also doing great) I have a raised bed with 8 tomato plants (all early girl) doing pretty well, and 20 green and red pepper plants which are doing well, and 3 watermelon plants I sprouted which are an inch high and have been for 3 months so not so well.

Probably going to plant some more potatoes and black beans in the rows that didn't grow, and maybe some more peas. those are all things that grow pretty quick and can tollerate a little chill (though Idon't expect it to get cold before October, maybe also plant some parsnips and once the tomato and pepper plants are done I'll be planting lettuce and spinach in the raised bed this fall since it's in what will eventually be my green house and I'll be able to have lettuce and spinach all winter long).

All that I planted, will not feed my family fo rlong, even with canning. next year the garden will be twice as big and I'll have 3 more raised beds.

My mom has 5 giant plots (bigger than mine) and it's just her and my step dad. They are able to make the chard (they blanch and freeze instead of can thier veggies) and peas last until late spring, carotts and potaoes are usually used up by mid winter and other things like tomatoes and cucumbers are used up quickly as they are picked. they also plant a lot of marifax beans and have enough of those to last until the next harvest. They do give away a lot of thier non storable produce like cucumbers and tomatoes.

Between my mom's plots, my step grand parents plots and mine (we all try to plant more than we'll need and trade certain things, I didn't plant any marifax, mom will give them to me, I may be hard pressed to get beets tho, they are a fav among EVERYONE, I'll have speghetti sauces, and jams to trade (hopefully) ).

[aiyana4969]

Oh and I have 37 strawberry plants, most are in rain gutters attached to my porch, I get about a half dozen of strawberries a day which is good because the plants are VERY young, they'll fruit all summer long untill the frost gets them.

If you want to see pics of it all, there's a thread on here by chloecat that wants to see pics of farms and animals, I posted them all over there.

[carrollrj25]

Bumping because I'd like to know too. I just can't find out how much to plant.

[photocowgirl]

We live in town so our space is limited... our garden is 16x20 raised bed and we FILL it... Family of 4 in KS...

My fam loves beans so about a third of the garden is beans. We plant 3-4 packs of seed. A good year we will freeze 10-20 quarts plus what we eat...

We plant about 4 tomato plants all different varieties. We freeze what we don't eat fresh for chili in the winter.

We usually only plant 2 pepper plants, but found a pack of rainbow peppers that looked too cool so we planted 8 plants this year - yikes. We do freeze what we don't eat for fajitas. So far we have gotten yellow, green, and purple peppers - fun!

We planted a pkg of zucchini and a pkg of yellow squash. We shred and freeze zucchini for bread, plus what we eat throughout the season, but we are still getting waaayyy too much. I'm thinking a 1/4 - 1/2 pkg of ea next yr...

Our family loves beets so we usually plant a pkg of them. One package goes a loooong way, but we can usually keep up with them fresh during the season.

A couple sets of onions will feed us until spring and then we have to buy them until the new crop is ready. We planted walla walla sweets and red this year.

We tried kohrabi and potatoes this year. Potatoes take up too much room and are too much work, but the girls loved growing them so may try again... Kohrabi is good, but will plant 1/2 pkg or less if we plant next year... they are a lot of work to fix...

No sweet corn bc it takes up too much room - we do get some from friendly farmers. No cucumbers bc no matter how few we plant we get too many and can usually find someone to trade other veggies for them...

[aiyana4969]

Try this link. It tell you how much to grow to feed a family of 4.

But it still depends on your tastes. Like us for example we use A LOT of tomatoes, peppers and onions (Lots of salsa, speghetti sauces and other dishes). The only peas I can get my fam to eat are snowpeas in a stirfry so I didn't plant many and am picking them as snow peas daily and freezing them. That type of thing.