How much do I plant

[Equanimity]

So in searching the internet I have found no information on how much I should be planting to even have a chance of canning things. Do I plant 5 tomatoes or 50? Help!

[prairiemom]

I think that's because so much depends on your soil and climate, the varieties you grow and personal family needs and tastes.

Here's what I grow: 25-30 tomato plants. Now 4-6 are cherry tomatoes, another 2-3 are for eating, so about 15-20 for canning purposes.
3-4 (15') rows of green and yellow wax beans.
3-4 rows of beets
3 rows of Swiss Chard
12 broccoli plants
12 cabbage
6 Brussel sprouts
5-8 pepper plants (2-3 jalepeno, 1 cayenne, 2-3 hungarian style for chili rellenos.)
3 rows of turnips/rutabagas
2-3 summer squash plants (pattypan, yellow and/or green zucchini) We eat it all summer and dry the excess.
1 winter squash plant (hubbard, acorn or spaghetti. That usually gives me more than enough.)
1 pumpkin plant (a medium or pie size) Last year I got 17 pie pumpkins. This year I got 3 jack-o-lantern sized. Variety really does matter.
Carrots--I can't tell you. I've never gotten a reliable yield to know how much to plant. I'm still experimenting with that.

This year this gave us about 85-90% of our family's veggies for one year, 2 adults, 2 teenage boys and an 8yo. But that's us. We have beautiful top soil, our tomatoes grow 6-7 feet tall. But we have a short growing season.

The best thing to do is start planning, making your best guess and keep a garden journal. The first 2-3 yrs that I did big gardens I weighed (or counted) everything I brought in, kept a tally of everything I preserved (freezing, canning and dehydrating), kept a record of when I ran out of the food in cold storage and then at the beginning of the next season (about Feb) I counted up what was left to decide what I had too much or too little of. It's been a lot of trial and error.

[signseeker]

Why the heck would you want 3 rows of Swiss Chard? :frown2:

[waif69]

:rofl:

[Equanimity]

Thanks prairiemom, thats some great information. Well I'm in the desert, i have a long growing season, well actually two, but terrible soil and I am actually forced into container gardening. How long are those rows your planting? I wonder if theres any way I could feasably grow enough for a family of 8 on a 1/4 acre rattlesnake farm?

[Julie]

This is what Dr. Mittleider suggest you plant for a family of four to live on. This is from "The Mittleider Gardening Course". I have a family of 7, so I would double the amount.

92 potato plants
180 bush bean plants
362 pea plants
26 broccoli plants
26 cauliflower plants
26 head lettuce plants
26 cabbage plants
92 sweet corn plants
20 zucchini plants
20 banana squash plants
26 cantaloupe plants
20 watermelon plants
26 tomato plants

fall - second harvest
92 potato plants
180 bush bean plants
362 pea plants
26 broccoli plants
26 cauliflower plants
26 head lettuce plants
26 cabbage plants
92 sweet corn plants

To harvest two crops with the assortment of foods listed above in one season, it is important to transplant well-grown potted plants in the beds.

If you live in the dessert like I do the best fertilizer to use is Mittleider's. I have double my yield by using it and it is organic. It is actually minerals. This is a good fertilizer for all areas too. If my family's life depended on my garden, this is what I would recommend.

[signseeker]

:svengo:

[prairiemom]

Wow! Yes, I think I'd faint too.

20 banana squash?????? I'm assuming that's a winter squash. I get 10-15 squash off one vine. (Actually I got 21 spaghetti squash off of one vine this year, 17 pumpkins off of one vine last year. The year I planted acorn we had so many I was giving them away to everyone.) 20 plants would get you 200-300 squash. I don't know any family that can eat that much.

Same with the beans. My rows are 15', the plants are 6" apart, so my 3 rows give me 90 plants, give or take. That gives me about 90-100 pts of beans, so we can eat about 3 jars a week (figuring 8 months when I can't get fresh veggies from the garden.) That's plenty of beans for our family of 5.

Our 8 broccoli plants gave me 34 bags of frozen broccoli. Yes, I could have used more (but getting the worms off the food was a battle!) I would figure cauliflower would give similar yields (but I have a hard time growing cauliflower.) So even doubling broccoli to 15-16 plants, that's still 2 bags a week.

Cabbage doesn't store well. I figure we can eat one a week till they start going bad after harvest, which would be at best 3 months--that 12 heads. I could dehydrate another 4-5 for soups. And sauerkraut would use up another 12-15 (that would give me about 14 qts of sauerkraut, 2 jars a month.) So to get that at most I'd need to plant 16 plants.

2 hills of zucchini gives us about 120-150 zukes. We eat one every day during the summer/fall, 20 or so in cold storage to eat fresh through the early winter, dry or freeze the rest. That's still 100 zukes to put up.

Nearly 200 potato plants???? Yikes! Each plant gives you at least 5-8 lbs (our friend got double that.) Even with low yields that's still a 1000 lbs of potatoes. We ended the season with 100 lbs and are only about 1/3 of the way through them. I figure they'll last until at least Mar-April, then we're just 2-3 months from fresh veggies, so I MIGHT need to buy 10-20 lbs at the store.

Wow, that just all seems like an awful lot. Our garden is 40X40. I can't even imagine how much space you'd need to grow all that. Granted, we may get unusually good yields from our garden, but we also have a short growing season. If it were me I'd start with much less and just see what you get for yields. Unless you have lots of friends who love squash. :l0 (46):

[signseeker]

You gotta' lock your doors at Church or else your backseat will be full of zucchini around here...

[Equanimity]

Um whoa, theres no way I could plant that much on my land. Maybe 1/2 of it. Geez!

[phylm]

"Cabbage doesn't store well. I figure we can eat one a week till they start going bad after harvest, which would be at best 3 months--that 12 heads. I could dehydrate another 4-5 for soups. And sauerkraut would use up another 12-15 (that would give me about 14 qts of sauerkraut, 2 jars a month.) So to get that at most I'd need to plant 16 plants."

Have you tried making coleslaw with your dried cabbage? Just put it in cold water and soak for awhile, drain and mix with mayo. I add a couple of
teaspoons of sugar and a handful or two of raisins, dried blueberries, or drained crushed pineapple, too. It isn't as pretty as the-at made with fresh cabbage, but it tastes good, and is an easy vegetable to grow. :yummie:

[phylm]

[quote=prairiemom;22462]Wow! Yes, I think I'd faint too.


Cabbage doesn't store well. I figure we can eat one a week till they start going bad after harvest, which would be at best 3 months--that 12 heads. I could dehydrate another 4-5 for soups. And sauerkraut would use up another 12-15 (that would give me about 14 qts of sauerkraut, 2 jars a month.) So to get that at most I'd need to plant 16 plants.


Have you tried making coleslaw with the dried cabbage? Just reconstitute it by soaking it in cold water (can do it overnight, if you want), then drain and mix with mayo. I toss in a couple of teaspoons of sugar, and a handful or two of raisins, or dried blueberries, or drained crushed pineapple. Isn't as pretty as that made with fresh cabbage, but tastes good.

[phylm]

Sorry for the duplication...thought a blip had stolen my first post.

[Jester]

The only way you will ever know how much to plant is to start a garden. It is different for each person because soil, climate and personal preferences are different for each person. When you have to rely on your garden it is a bad time to be learning that it is too cold where you live to grow tomatoes and wasted space on a crop that will not produce in your area. One of the best things is to find someone in your neighborhood who grows a garden and find out what they grow, when they plant it, how they take care of it and what it produces.

[phylm]

PrairieMom

If you soak your broccoli and cauliflower in saltwater for awile, you'll find that those pesky worms float to the top with their hands all folded waiting for their funeral lily.

[Highlandsunrise]

Last year I thought the worms were going to carry the cabbage away they were so thick. Eeeeeuuuu. I just kept taking off leaves till I didn't see any more of them. I have had the same problem with broccoli.

[Julie]

A good thing for worms and bugs in our garden is to dust it with self-rising flour. They ingest it with the leaves and it swells in their stomach and kills them.

[prairiemom]

PrairieMom

If you soak your broccoli and cauliflower in saltwater for awile, you'll find that those pesky worms float to the top with their hands all folded waiting for their funeral lily.

Yeah, it kills them just fine, but it doesn't get them out of the broccoli. All the big worms and the ones on the outer edges all died just fine and floated into the water. But the little guys or those that were deeper in all the cracks and crevices of all the broccoli branches stayed stuck there. Didn't matter to me that they were dead, I still didn't want to eat them :tongue_smilie:and it took waaaaaayyy too much time to get them all out.

[Rogmo]

A good thing for worms and bugs in our garden is to dust it with self-rising flour. They ingest it with the leaves and it swells in their stomach and kills them.

Oh, is that what that popping sound was?? :tongue_smilie: