One of the most common questions homesteaders ask me is: "How many vegetables should I plant in order to feed my family for a whole year?" Unfortunately, this is a tough question to answer, because there are so many variables to consider. Still, I grow nearly all my family's vegetables (with the exception of a little lettuce or peppers here and there), so let me walk you through the way I determine how much to plant in our garden. 

But First... You know the phrase "results may vary?" Well, that's certainly true when it comes to planning out a garden to feed your family. Here are some things that can drastically affect your personal results: 

Soil: Your garden's soil has a huge impact on how much food you can successfully grow. If, for example, I plant veggies directly into our native heavy clay soil, my yields are quite modest. But if I plant the same vegetables in my rich, organic soil (here's how I made the transformation), my yields explode.

Gardening Methods: The way you choose to garden will make your plot more or less abundant. Here's an example of what I mean: In the film My Urban Garden, Carol Bowlby plants her entire backyard so there are only extremely skinny pathways to walk on. Compared to someone with the same amount of space, but using wider paths, this allows her to grow more food for her family. 

Varieties: What plants you select make a difference. Not all bean plants, for example, produce the same amount of food, even when grown under the same conditions. For instance, Provider beans produce far more abundantly for me than Dragon Tongue beans...and while Yard Long beans may produce abundantly in hot climates, they produce poorly in my cooler region. 

Palate: Personal taste also comes into play. For instance, if you hate eating kale, even though it's quick to grow and highly prolific, there's little point in planting it in your garden. If you adore Brussels sprouts, however, you'll want to plant more than the average person - even though Brussels take up a fair amount of room and have a long growing period - thereby producing less food than kale, even if grown in the same amount of space. 

Now, Do the Math

While it's important to use math to determine how many vegetables you plant, the math isn't difficult - and I'll walk you through it step by step.

Start by keeping track of how much of each type of vegetable you eat in any given month. Just keep a notebook in the kitchen, and every time someone in your family eats a veggie, note what type it is and how many ounces or pounds were consumed. (It's best to use a kitchen scale for this; you could guess at the weight, but the calculations you make will be less accurate.) At the end of the month, use these notes to add up how many pounds of each vegetable your family ate. 

Next, multiply that figure by the number of months in a year. For instance, if Jane Doe eats 2 lbs. of broccoli in a month's time, she'd multiply 2 (lbs. of broccoli) by 12 (months). The result tells her how many pounds of broccoli she eats, on average, in one year. (In this case, 24 lbs.) 

The next part can be a bit tricky because you need to consider how many pounds of food each plant is likely to produce. You can sometimes find this figure on seed packets or in seed catalogs (and if this figure is provided for your specific variety, by all means, use it for your calculations). Sometimes local extension office websites share this type of info, too. However, my pet peeve is that most sources list "how many to plant per person" (which isn't very helpful, because how do they know how much you like to eat any given vegetable?) or "how many pounds of food per square foot" (which varies too much depending on the gardening method you use). 

Over the years, though, I've found general guidelines at various seed company websites, as well as a pretty realistic chart in Melissa K. Norris' book The Family Garden Plan. Using these multiple sources, I've created a handy dandy chart to make your calculations easier. (Click here to see the chart.) Just remember, the numbers given are a guideline. No one can give you a completely accurate figure of how much food your varieties in your specific conditions will yield. 

Continuing to use broccoli as our example, remember that we figured Jane Doe wants to eat 24 lbs. of broccoli in a year. Looking at the chart, we see that the average broccoli plant produces about 1 lb. of broccoli head. (The leaves and stalks are edible, too, but we'll just consider those a bonus crop.) Therefore, Jane Doe will need to put about 24 broccoli plants in her garden. Since we know we're using an average yield number, and we also know disease and pests happen, I recommend that number as a minimum. 

Some plants produce just one thing; for example, each carrot seed yields one carrot. (Other plants that do this include onions, leeks, turnips, beets, and parsnips.) This makes calculations easier. For example, if I use 2 onions a week and want enough to last a year, the math is: 

2 (onions per week) x 52 (weeks in a year) = 104 onion plants needed 

If you do a lot of preserving, you can also do a bit of math to figure out how much to plant. Let's say John Smith likes to can 30 pint jars of dill pickles every year. The average cucumber seed produces about 3 to 5 lbs. of cukes, so we'll use the average number of 4 to make our calculation. John's canning book tells him that he needs about 8 lbs. of pickling cucumbers to make 8 pints of pickles. So he'd do the math this way: 

30 (jars) x 8 (lbs. needed for each jar) = 240 total lbs. needed 

240 (lbs. needed) ÷ 4 (approximate lbs. from each plant) = 60 individual plants needed 

Other Considerations

Once you've done the math, you'll need to think about how you'll store the resulting food. For instance, while you may want to grow 30 lbs. of cauliflower for the year, fresh cauliflower doesn't store well for long, even under optimal conditions. Therefore, you'd need to either plan to preserve a lot of the cauliflower (through freezing, freeze drying, dehydrating, or canning as pickles) or you'll need to succession plant and preserve just some of the cauliflower. This means you'll plant perhaps one or two cauliflower plants on week one, and then one or two more plants every subsequent week, allowing you to harvest fresh cauliflower throughout the growing season. Just make sure you keep in mind how long it takes your variety of cauliflower to come to maturity (information that should be on the seed packet). Always allow the plants enough time to reach harvest, given the time of year and the length of your growing season. 

Those of you who eat mostly vegetables (or those of you who live where your gardens must be small) may find that when you do the math, you can't possibly grow all of your veggies in the amount of space you have. If you really want to be as self-sufficient as possible, you'll want to: 

* Prioritize what you grow. Choose a few vegetables that you eat the most, and focus on growing those, while planning to buy the rest from the grocery store or a local farmer's market. 

* Learn to eat what's in season. 

* Learn to do without, or purchase certain veggies as a treat. 

Also bear in mind that if you're new to gardening, trying to grow all your veggies the first year is likely a mistake. As you learn to garden, you will inevitably make mistakes...and it's better to make them in a small garden you've put less time and money into. In addition, large gardens can be overwhelming for anyone, let alone someone who doesn't have a lot of gardening experience. You don't want to plan a large garden only to get so overwhelmed by weeding, harvesting, and preserving that you can't keep up.

In such cases, I again recommend focusing on the vegetables that are most important/most used in your family. As you gain confidence and experience in gardening, plan on expanding your garden a little bit every year. 

Finally, remember that all your food crops do not have to grow in one garden. Especially if your space is limited, it makes sense to spread the love around. For example, when I first started growing food in earnest, I had a small backyard vegetable plot, but then I also planted veggies in a front window planter, along our house foundation, in pots on the porch, and even in our mow strip.