How Much Should I Plant?
Thanks to Christina, for asking this great question, and inspiring me to do a post on the subject for everyone’s use (including myself)! Of course, this is a rough guide. As you learn more about what suits your family’s needs you can adjust the amounts. This is just a good guide for beginners like me who have no idea where to start!
Asparagus: about 10-15 plants per person
Beans (Bush): about 15 plants per person
Beans (Pole): 2-4 poles of beans per person (each pole with the four strongest seedlings growing)
Beets: about 36 plants per person.
Broccoli: 3-5 plants per person
Cabbage: 2-3 plants per person
Cantaloupe: figure on about 4 fruits per plant (estimate how much your family would eat)
Carrots: about 100 seeds per person (1/4 oz would be plenty for a family of six)
Cauliflower: 2-3 plants per person
Collards: about 5 plants per person
Corn: start out with 1/2 lb. seeds for the family and adjust as needed
Cucumbers: 3-6 plants per family
Eggplant: 3-6 plants per family
Lettuce: 4-5 plants per person
Okra: 3-4 plants per person
Onions: 12-15 plants per person
Parsnips: 12-15 plants per person
Peas: about 120 plants per person
Peppers: 3-5 plants per person
Spinach: about 15 plants per person
Squash (including Zucchini): 1 pkt. (50 seeds) per family
*As Frugal Carol pointed out, although this is what the books recommend for a year’s worth for a family, it does seem quite excessive. It seems wiser to start with only a few and see what works for you.
Sweet Potatoes: about 75 plants per family
Tomatoes: about 15 plants per family
Turnips: about 1/4 lb seeds per family
Watermelon: about 1/2 oz. seeds per family
* Most of the information here came from the book Reader’s Digest Back to Basics
Hope this is helpful! I know I’ll be referring back to this list myself!
If you are an experienced gardener, and have a good suggestion for planting amounts, or want to share what works for your family, I’d love to hear from you!
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Thank you so much Kendra, this is very helpful, now I can go order my seeds. We are having a snow storm today, so I have plenty of time before we begin planting. Blessings
Be careful with the squash and zucchini. We planted six plants of each last year and we had so much that it took over the garden and we couldn’t eat it fast enough.
We did plant our onions yesterday!!!
This guide made me laugh. The 50 squash/zucc plants will be enouigh to feed a village! We plant 3 zucc plants every year and have enoigh to make bread, make bags of breaded zucc for the freezer, use some in a home made V8 juice, puree some for home made spaghetti sauce and sell a bunch.
My advice?
Know what will and won’t work in your climate. Or if you do know that something won’t work, that you need to be stubborn about attempting to make it work (like watermelons in my short season climate!).
And have a backup plan. If the birds get all your strawberries or you forgot that garlic and pole beans hate each other so you get dismal crops, it’s nice to have a farmer a few miles away with an acre of beans and another one with 5 acres of strawberries you can go take care of business.
It all takes practice though, that’s for sure. I have my master list of what I want to can/freeze/dehydrate/root cellar for the year, and we’ll see how close I get by the time it frosts.
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