How big of a garden do you need?

When it comes to fruit trees my motto seems to be that one can never have too many fruit trees.  What fruit we don't eat we can or dry.  If fruit falls to the ground it goes to the chickens.  But what about a garden?  How much is too much?  How many vegetables do you need to plant.  I'm not talking about the variety, planting every vegetable that you can think of is great.  It leads to a good variety.  My question is how large a garden is too large?

 

I guess some of the questions I need to ask are how many is the garden feeding, is it for fresh use only, is it also canned or dried?  Is the garden providing most of your food?  How much space do you have?  How much time do you have? 

 

I've done a lot of research about how much you can grow of each type of vegetable in a 100 foot row.  I know that there are many other methods than growing one plant wide and 100 feet in length, but that is a good way to measure for comparison.  Whether you can plant 100 plants in this row or intensively garden those 100 plants in a 5 foot by 5 foot space isn't where this is going, but how much produce can you get in your 100 foot row? 

Vegetable	Produced in 100'	Fresh-1 person
Asparagus	30 lbs	10-15 plants
Beans, snap bush	120 lbs	15-20 feet
Beans, snap pole	150 lbs	8-10 feet
Beans, lima bush	25 lbs shelled	10-15 feet
Beets	150 lbs	5-10 feet
Broccoli	100 lbs	3-5 plants
Brussels sprouts	75 lbs	2-5 plants
Cabbage	150 lbs	3-4 plants
Carrots	100 lbs	5-10 feet
Cantaloupe	100 fruits	3-5 hills
Cauliflower	100 lbs	3-5 plants
Celery	180 stalks	10 stalks
Chard, swiss	75 lbs	3-5 plants
Collards and kale	100 lbs	5-10 feet
Corn, sweet	10 dozen	10-15 feet
Cucumbers	120 lbs	1-2 hills
Eggplant	100 lbs	2-3 plants
Garlic	40 lbs	1-5 feet
Lettuce, leaf	50 lbs	10 feet
Mustard	100 lbs	5-10 feet
Okra	100 lbs	4-6 feet
Onions	100 lbs	3-5 feet
Parsley	30 lbs	1-3 feet
Parsnips	100 lbs	10 feet
Peas	20 lbs	15-20 feet
Peppers	60 lbs	3-5 plants
Potatoes	100 lbs	50-100 feet
Soybeans	20 lbs	50 feet
Spinach	40-50 lbs	5-10 feet
Squash, summer	150 lbs	2-3 hills
Squash, winter	100 lbs	1-3 hills
Tomatoes	100 lbs	3-5 plants
Turnip greens	50-100 lbs	5-10 feet
Turnip roots	50-100 lbs	5-10 feet
Watermelon	40 fruits	2-4 hills

 

While this table suggests how much is "normal" for one person to eat fresh, it may not at all reflect how much you or your family eats fresh.  It is suggested to at least double the amount per person if you are putting up enough for the year.  I know of many people who plant hundreds of tomatoes.  According to this chart they should be planting 10 plants per person if they are eating fresh and canning some.  That's not nearly enough!  It also depends on how you use the tomatoes.  In our house I dry tomatoes.  I also throw bags of tomatoes into the freezer (if I'm making a vegetable soup I'll just take out a couple of tomatoes and throw them into the soup).  Making salsa uses a lot of tomatoes but you aren't cooking the tomatoes down.  Putting up spaghetti sauce, tomato sauce, tomato juice, or catsup uses a lot of tomatoes.  A family of 4 may need between 100-200 plants depending on how often they use tomato products. 

 

Even with it's downfalls, this chart is good for the new gardener.  If you plant too much of any crop then you will be spending lots of time watering and weeding for something that you aren't going to eat.  If you don't plant enough, then you will spend lots of time working and not really reaping the benefits of your labor.  A couple of weeks ago I was at my mom's house.  For dinner we got to eat some of the things from her garden.  We each got 1 1/2 strawberries and 2 pea pods.  They tasted great but it certainly wasn't used as an actual course in the meal.