How Much To Plant?

"How much food should I plant?" I hear this question all the time.

If you are new to square foot gardening, or new to vegetable gardening in general, you won't have a good sense yet of how much food to plant. Without any guidance, most people will tend to put in too big of a garden and produce too much food.

You don't want to waste precious yard space, time, energy, or money.  All of these resources are expensive. You should keep the garden as small as possible, yet be sufficient in size to feed your family.  A good goal, therefore, should be to grow just enough that you can use everything that the garden produces without needlessly wasting space, time, energy, and money.

From The Other Angle
Rather than focusing on how much to plant, I want you to consider the other end of  the crop's life cycle.  How much will you harvest during a two to three week window of time?  That is the amount you should consider planting in one sitting. Then wait two weeks and plant that much again.  Wait two more weeks.  Plant again.  Rinse and repeat.

The fancy term for this type of planting schedule is SUCCESSION PLANTING.  It is a strategy that helps produce a steady supply of food to harvest, yet helps you not be overwhelmed with too much work and food at any one time.  If you are accustomed to traditional gardening, you'll want to fill the entire garden rather than initially see all that empty space.  Patience is a virtue.

Still difficult to visualize how much food to plant, I admit.  So let me give you a simple formula.

Start with the correct size garden.
For your first square foot garden, plan on a raised 4'x4' box for each adult in your household. Add an additional 1/2 box for every child under the age of 10 or 12, you know, the age before they eat you out of house and home. When a child reaches that hungry teenage point, plan your garden space as if they are another adult in your household.

The garden does not have to be exactly shaped as a 4'x4' box, but 16 squares per adult is small and manageable yet plenty big enough for this intense use of space.  Since most lumber is readily available in 8' sections, creating 4'x4' boxes requires a minimum number of cuts and virtually no waste. This is an easy and inexpensive Saturday morning DIY project.

Then follow a simple sowing strategy.
Now that you have an appropriately sized garden for your family, develop a planting calendar.  By sowing 1/6th of your garden every 2 weeks, you will be harvesting at roughly the same rate when these crops mature. Plan on sowing a wide variety of vegetables and just one or two squares per crop each time you sow.

Your county extension office should have a guide to help you choose seasonally appropriate vegetables for your area, broken down by month. Simply refer to their calendar every time you sow to improve your success rate and add even more variety to your garden.  If you are in Phoenix Arizona, use Maricopa County's vegetable guide found here:
http://extension.arizona.edu/sites/extension.arizona.edu/files/pubs/az1005.pdf

Following this strategy, you will fill your garden in twelve weeks.  You will have a variety of crops at various stages of maturity.  Some of the older crops will have already matured so you should have already enjoyed fruits of your labor. Literally.

Before the twelve weeks is over, you will have most likely already harvested some of your earliest squares.  As you empty a square, you simply

• amend the soil in that 12" square with a trowel full of compost 
• sow a different crop than the one you just harvested from that square, giving you an automatic crop rotation within each 12" square.

A sample average family

If your family has the average 1.8 children, let's see how to apply this garden sizing and sowing schedule:

• You and your spouse each need a 4'x4' box
• Your two children each need a 2'x4' box
• That's a total of 3 4'x4' boxes (16 squares each) for a total of 48 squares. 
• Divide the 48 squares by 6 plantings (over a 12 week period) and the result is 8.
• That means you will plant 8 squares now, 8 more squares two weeks from now, etc.

Does eight small squares (2'x4' section) seem too small?  Compared to traditional gardening you would be correct.  But let's take a look at how much food you can put in a 2'x4' area using the square foot gardening method:

• 4 heads of lettuce
• 9 spinach plants
• 9 beets
• 16 carrots
• 16 radishes
• 1 pepper plant
• 1 tomato plant
• 16 scallions

Not a fan of beets and radishes? I encourage you to still grow these crops for their greens. 

Two weeks from now, you may decide that 16 scallions and 9 beets are enough for a month, and you have a second variety of lettuce that you want to try.  So your next 2'x4' section in the garden might look like this:

• 8 heads of lettuce (4 each of 2 varieties)
• 2 kale
• 16 carrots
• 16 radishes
• 1 broccoli
• 1 pepper (a different variety from your last planting) 

Another 2 weeks out, you will plant yet another 8 squares.  At this point, you may be enjoying a radish or two from the first planting, and maybe a few tender leaves carefully trimmed from the lettuce. 

Summary
Can you see how this strategy:

• gives you the perfect size garden for your needs?  
• creates a sustainable garden through soil amending and crop rotation?
• will not overwhelm you with a large harvest through succession planting?
• doesn't waste your family's precious resources?
• can easily be adjusted as your family's needs change?