How much do I need from my garden?
Every year, gardeners are faced with one of two situations. One is seen every year when courgettes are planted and if you are a parent you will have heard this statement from your children too many times. “Zucchini again?” The other situation is when the garden does not produce enough produce to make it through the season. In the past, knowing how much to plant was just a guess, but today we have tools that can guide us to a more appropriate educated deduction.
To use this garden tool to its fullest, one must first understand human nature. First, adults tend to enjoy vegetables more than children. While there are exceptions to this rule, it is a general premise of this tool, and contrary to what children may say, French fries are not a healthy alternative to fresh vegetables.
The second premise that this tool uses is the amount of space an adult needs compared to a child. Adults need 4 square feet of garden space for each meal served per day. Children, on average, need only 4 square feet per meal per day. What this means is that if you are only going to harvest for a dinner salad, then you only need a 4 square foot garden.
To aid in this understanding, let’s create a graph. The far left column will be the names of the people you plan to serve. In my example, I’m going to use a family of three. The following columns represent individual 4 x 4 yard spaces or 3 x 3 yard spaces for the child.
In this example, mom will have a salad for lunch and dinner. This means that she will have two columns marked. The father is only going to have a salad for dinner, so he only needs to check one column. The boy is only 5 years old and in doing so he only needs to go over a 3 square foot garden space.
This family has also decided to try urban farming, and in doing so, they need vegetables to preserve for the next year. Since each family will benefit from these vegetables, an additional column should be checked.
This family wants to donate some fresh produce to a local food bank. In doing so, they decide to grow an additional 4 by 4 garden space for their food donation.
Once the needs of the family have been verified in the chart, it is a simple process whereby controls are added. Then the number of checks is multiplied by the size of the garden space. This number is the number of square feet you will need to meet the needs of this family.
If you’re using the square foot yard method, just take the number you came up with and multiply it. This will give you the total number of plants you need for the season, which includes cool or cole crops and warm season.
Having an idea of how much you need for a season will save on your budget, reduce waste, and allow you to plan for the entire season. Once you have this information, you’ll be prepared for the sea of seed catalogs that will fill your mailbox.