hello here is what my organic gardening book says about lettuce... "plant aobut 2 feet of row or eight plants per person every two weeks if you want lettuce daily for salads".. hope this helps

- mac

Danaa

Try this.

It's a planting guide for Maryland, but it does recommend #rows or plants per person.

Dana, the problem with charts, like the one Anney posted for you, are that they don't take into account individual preferences. Maybe no one in your house will eat brussel sprouts, but everyone likes pasta with homemade tomato sauce on it. What I would recommend is that you look at which vegetables your family enjoys the most, and decide on what % of space to devote to each one. Granted some vegetables will produce a lot more per square foot than others, but it will at least give you a starting place.

For example, the vegetables everyone in my family will eat are green beans, peas, salads, and broccoli. Then there are things that most will eat, but one or two don't care for like, cauliflower, carrots, cucumbers, and tomatoes (well, tomatoes aren't a good example, because everyone here will eat sauces made from them). Anyway, the majority of my space will be devoted to things we all like, then small areas for things that some of us will eat. What would be more useful, but I was unable to locate, was a chart that just gives the expected yields per plant. The one below is similar to Anney's chart, but there is other useful info in the publication, if you want to look through it.

Gardening is a learn as you go project. No matter how well you try to plan, you just can't predict the outcome. Some things will grow better than expected, and try to take over, other things will get eaten by bugs, rabbits, or deer. One thing is for sure, you will never know the joys, satisfaction, and frustrations of vegetable gardening until you try it.

Bonnie

Here is a link that might be useful: Another chart (see page 22)

Danaa, that's a really tough question. There are so many variables:

How much do you eat vegies?
How much do you eat per meal/serving?
What vegies do you eat?
Have you gardened before? If so, how big was your garden
and how close did you get to your stated goal?
How big is your family?

You might do better to asking this info for individual crops.

We have four adults (for all practical purposes) living at home and I have three gardens. One is about 30' by 100'. Another is about 25' X 30', and another is roughly 45' by 25'. Sizes are "guesstimated."

We're just about meeting your goal. But we grow corn, which we use for meal and grits and lots of sweet potatoes. Another person might consider themselves as meeting such a goal and only have about 20'X20' of garden.

If you are a new gardener be careful that you don't overdo it and get discouraged. It's better to look forward to expanding "next year" than be totally out of control and discouraged during the growing season.

George
Tahlequah, OK

Thanks for all the advice!

What will your family eat? Will they eat corn and green beans? Eight ears of corn can usually feed a family of four (like two ears of corn on the cob) but it tastes so good in the winter you might want to put 12 ears per bag (cut off). 12 ears is about eight foot of row on average so if you want corn every week 52 weeks x 8 ft = about 400 ft of corn not counting corn on the cob

Green beans produce big time under good growing conditions. You can probably get 30 gallons or more of blue lake per 100 ft of row, I have picked 50 gallons off 100 ft of row before.

If you are canning tomatoes you could probably figure on storing 1/2 gallon of tomatoes per plant and it could be better.

make sure you get the ball canning guide (or borrow it from the library) if you are storing things so that you know the rules and don't end up sick.

A book by Dick Raymond titled Joy of Gardening has all the information you are looking for.

Good information, especially if you're in a rural area with acreage. And all the suggestions to figure out what your family will eat and how much you want is all excellent advice. I did something similar for my suburban garden. As you can see in my pics linked below that I used raised beds, but the diagram shows a breakdown of just how much space in my 115ish SF of garden space will be devoted to our favorite veggies. Of course I'll stagger the plantings so we don't have a huge crop of one thing, and chose indeterminate tomotoes so they're not all done at once.

I don't know if the amount of space I've devoted to each veggie is enough or too much, but that's part of the fun. Finding out that you have 100 lbs of beans and you don't like beans THAT much. That's why I have local family that I can pawn off excess veggies on. Fun for all. Good luck.

Here is a link that might be useful: Sinfonian's garden in progress...

George, I don't want to hijack this thread but you mentioned you grow lots of sweet potatoes and you're in my zone. Briefly, do you have any quick tips about growing them in zone 6?
Dana, they've given you good advice. I'm in the same boat, starting to get a plan together of what to plant and how much. We canceled our CSA membership and decided to grow it all ourselves. This will be the first year we are going to grow things we can store for the winter, like butternut squash. I'm going to use anney's chart and modify and hope for the best. Good luck.