How much to plant per person for a year's worth of food or how many plants per person… 'tis a much-asked question when one is trying to harvest and preserve enough food to take their family through an entire year without buying it from the store.
As we shared in Episode #81 with my father and 17 Self-Sufficiency Tips from the Great Depression and 1940's almost all of the food they ate was what they grew and put up themselves, knowing how to grow all your own food was crucial to survival.
These essential homestead skills used to be a way of life, planting and putting up your own food to see you through. It was how the pioneers did it.
Most of us aren't relying completely on what we plant and preserve ourselves, we're still supplementing with the grocery store. But what if you did have to survive on what you planted and preserved? How much money would it free up for you and your family?
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How much to plant per person for a year's worth of food
I have to be honest with you, it's going to vary a bit for every person and family. The average amounts you'll find listed below in this post are assuming your soil condition is good, average weather, and low pest or disease damage. It's a good starting place, but you'll want to plan your crops and garden with these charts and notes to make sure you're planting enough based on what your family actually eats.
Back in the pioneer days as well as the Great Depression, most families grew some of their own food, and many of them relied solely or almost solely on what they'd grown and preserved to feed themselves through the winter.
How much do you need to grow per person for a year?
aka, how much to plant per person.
There are five vegetable crops that we currently grow enough of that I don't purchase from the store, as in ever.
What size garden to feed a family of 4 for a year?
Our main annual vegetable garden space is a 20 x 30-foot rectangular bed. We have a 10 x 20-foot high tunnel where I grow all of our tomato plants.
This past year we added another 20 x 20-foot garden bed and three 3×20-foot rows for corn.
Your yield per plant can vary by type and growing season, but this is our average and typical yield.
Beans. Ya probably guessed this is one of my favorites. Green beans go well all by themselves as your vegetable for a meal, or they'll stretch a casserole or stew. One of our favorite foods is a pot of green beans simmered with a bit of fatback (aka bacon) thrown in.
Our strain of green bean is a pole bean and when allowed to mature on the vine, also doubles as a dried or shell bean. A lot of times these are also referred to as shelly beans.
Dried beans are awesome possum (confession, I've never eaten possum, just in case there was any confusion there, but when I get excited about something I tend to rhyme) because they're packed with protein and calories. This is one of the few times where we'll get excited about food having a lot of calories.
When you're truly living off of what you can grow, especially if it's not livestock (this allows you to render down a fat source) it can be hard to get a substantial amount of calories from just vegetables and fruit. A dried bean gives you both.
In my experience, a pole bean gives you a much larger harvest for the amount of space than a bush bean. With our pole beans, I plant approximately a total of 30 plants (3 bean plants on each 6-foot pole with 3 poles to a teepee, so 9 plants for each teepee) and from that I can about 50 to 60 jars of green beans, eat them fresh through the season, and save for both seed and as a dry bean over 200 beans.
How many bean plants per person?
The average recommendation of bean plants per person for a year's worth of food is 10 to 20 plants per person.
This is going to depend on your growing season, the amount of harvest from your bean, and of course, how much your family actually consumes of that food in a year.
Garlic is such an easy crop to grow, especially when you do a fall planting. Most of the winter your garden is lying fallow, the perfect time to put the ground to use with garlic. Harvest in the summer and you can still use that space for late summer and early fall crops.
We tend to always double the garlic in a recipe at our house, just saying. For us, about 50 bulbs of garlic take us all the way through the year. If you want your garlic to last a full year learnhow to harvest garlic for long-term storage
How many garlic plants per person?
The averagerecommended amount is 15 bulbs per person, but with garlic, I say err on the side of having too many (because that's really not ever the case) Plus, garlic can be used medicinally and also fed to livestock. We give a few cloves of garlic every week to our piglets and many people also supplement with garlic for their chickens.
Grab my guide on How to Plant Garlic here
How many potato plants per person?
The average recommendation is 15 to 20 potato plants per person. With healthy soil, you can expect about 6 to 10 potatoes per plant or 50 lbs of potatoes from 2 lbs of seed potatoes.
If you plant a minimum of 15 potato plants and get a low yield of 5 potatoes per plant, that's 75 potatoes, equalling approximately 6 potatoes a week. I don't eat 6 potatoes a week so this is where keeping track of how much you eat of specific foods is more important than following a recommended average.
Make sure you're picking the correct storage variety of potatoes and type for your area. Find those here in How to Plant and Grow Potatoes (In Containers or the Ground)
Remember your yield will depend on how healthy your soil is and no disease takes over especially blight. Read more on
How many tomato plants per person?
Tomatoes. Tomatoes are probably the most versatile of all the vegetables (I know, technically it's a fruit). From salsa, stewed tomatoes, tomato sauce, ketchup, pizza sauce, marinara, tomato soup, see, tomatoes go with just about every meal and in between.
The average recommendation is 5 tomato plants per person.I grow 18 tomato plants for our family of four and am able to can close to 40 jars of salsa, 10 quarts of stewed tomatoes, and 25 jars of tomato sauce.
For those of us planning on growing enough tomatoes for a year, that means we'll be preserving them, and when you're preserving, paste tomatoes are the name of the game. While I love cherry tomatoes and sliced tomato sandwiches, paste tomatoes are going to carry you much farther with canning and making your sauces.
Pickling cucumber, make sure you pick a pickling cucumber variety for preserving. We found about 6 to 9 nine cucumber plants provide us with enough for a year.
Winter squash, we're able to grow and preserve enough winter squash to take us through the entire year. We do several varieties, usually 5 to 6 plants of each type.
If you're growing your food with the goal of having enough to eat for the whole year, you're going to have to preserve it.
Summer squash is quite prolific. In fact, we have a joke around here that when zucchini is on, don't leave your car windows down or your doors unlocked, or you might find a surprise of zucchini.
The general recommendation is 1 plant per person for summer squash.
Winter squash is awesome because you can use root cellar techniques for your food storage. For more info on using root cellar techniques without a root cellar check out10 Tips for Storing Vegetables w/out a Root Cellar Long Term
I have successfully stored spaghetti squash in our kitchen with root cellar techniques from the end of August until mid-March.
The general recommendation for winter squash is 2 to 3 plants per person.
Keep in mind, these are averages, you'll want to adjust for crops your family eats more or less of.
How many plants to plant per person
Grab our FREE How Much to Plant Per Person in the Garden Worksheets & Charts!
- bean plants -bush 15 to 20 plants
pole 10 to 15 plants - brassica family (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, etc.) 2 to 3 plants
- corn – 15 plants
- cucumber – 2 to 3 plants
- garlic- 15 bulbs
- onion – 15 bulbs
- peas – 20 to 30 plants
- peppers- 2 plants
- potatoes – 15 to 20 plants
- tomatoes- 5 plants
- Summer squash- 1 to 2 plants
- Winter squash- 1 to 2 plants
Best plants for protein and calorie content
One thing you want to consider when trying to grow your own food is having a food source that is high in protein and calories, which can be hard to establish with just vegetables.
Dried peas and beans fit this bill. Make sure you have at least one or the other as one of your staple crops when growing enough food for a whole year for your family.
Resources for Planting and Preserving a Years Worth of Food
Grow a Year’s Worth of Food for Your Family
Increase your harvest and maximize the space you have using organic and natural methods to raise a year's worth of the fruits and vegetables your family enjoys with Melissa's step-by-step plans and charts with The Family Garden Plan: Raise a Year's Worth of Healthy and Sustainable Food
Get your FREE copy of my worksheets that will help you determine what your family’s produce needs are, how much you should plant, and how to plan your garden space accordingly by clicking here
There you have it, everything you need to help you plant out how much to plant for a year's worth of food.
