How Much Garden Do You Need?

\”Are YOU Ready?\”

One of the frustrations of gardening can be accurately planning and planting the proper amount of garden to meet your needs. If you ever get to the point where you garden is the difference between eating well and barely surviving, you’re going to want to have a good handle on how to judge these things.

I’m going to pick just a couple of my favorite crops and run some numbers so y’all can see how wide a range we’re talking about here.

Things to keep in mind here, in my house we aim for 9 servings of fruit and veg a day per adult. That’s the latest recommendation from the departments of Agriculture and Health and Human Services. Nine servings translate to about 2 cups of fruit and 2 1/2 cups of vegetables every day.

Lettuce – Ok, let’s break this down. A serving size of lettuce, for your average person is 1 cup. If you want a lunch salad that covers 2 vegetable servings, you need 2 cups of lettuce. (Yes yes you could do 1 cup of lettuce and 1 cup of various other veg, let’s not overly complicate the math here.) Now, we multiply that out by the numbers of adults you are feeding. Let’s go with 4 adults, (after SHTF you likely won’t be dining with just your spouse and kids, there’s likely to be extra adults around for various reasons I’ve covered before.) That’s 8 cups of lettuce for one lunch salad.  That’s 2-3 heads of lettuce (depending on the size of the head for the variety you grow, this is why it’s important to know your varieties.) So, you probably want more than 1 salad from your garden. Do you want a couple weeks worth of salad out of the garden? 12 salads would need 24-36 heads of lettuce during that 2 week time span.  If you are planting at a distance of 5″ per lettuce head, that’s 15 row feet of lettuce to get to that 36 number.   If you have a denser, bigger head of lettuce, something like a romaine maybe, you can probably get away with 10 row feet of lettuce. Now, that’s just 2 weeks worth of lettuce for you and your 3 adult house mates. If you planted 3 sets of those 10-15′ rows around 2 weeks apart, you’d have a nice long lettuce crop. (Unless you suffer some sort of crop failure.)

Summer Squash – A good Zucchini or summer squash bush should produce 6-10 squashes during the season. 1 week, sometimes 2 a week.  One squash can be the backbone of a pasta dish that can feed 4 adults. If you can keep things creative and get everyone on board for 2 squash based meals a week, that would justify planting 2 bushes. If you want to can up a batch of zucchini relish, plant a 3rd bush. Or just plant 2 and when everyone revolts at the idea of another squash based meal, you have a backup-relish plan.

Tomatoes – Tomatoes are so hard to gauge. It’s either a great year and every vine over-produces or it’s a lousy year and every vine under-produces.  Plant as many as you can. Period. Make sure you give them enough room, and enough support (Indeterminates can grow to be 6 or 7 feet tall) and enough water. Don’t grow them upside down. Just don’t. If you get tired of eating them fresh (they can be part of that 1 cup other veg from the salad example above) you can boil what feels like an infinite number of tomatoes down into paste and ketchups.

Green beans - I grow bush beans, sorry pole bean lovers. If we have any experienced pole bean growers who want to share some harvest math, holler out in the comments. Ok, I’m going to rough out a cup of grean beans as equal to 15 beans, a small handful. I think most times when I go out to harvest I can get that much from about 3 or 4 row feet of beans. So, 4 servings of beans would probably need 12-16 feet of beans. If you want more than one meal with green bean side per week, put in another 12-16 feet.

Raspberries - A 20 foot row of canes can keep 4 serious berry eaters happy.

I didn’t talk any about growing for just one person. And that’s purposeful. The only thing that makes a solitary life manageable is the grid and modern conveniences. I think if you’re going to go to the trouble of planting a garden, you might as well plant more than you need. You can give it to some of the many hungry children.

Come on, already! Plant a garden! You don’t really want to live off of MRE’s. And this shit takes practice.

- Calamity Jane