Confused about size of garden?

[jadekat]

I'm a first time wanna be gardener. I'm having a hard time deciding how big to make my garden. I have a very big yard so space isn't a issue. I don't know how many seeds I should plant of each time of fruit/veggie. How can you figure out approximately how much each type is gonna produce? Sorry if these questions sound stupid.

I'm wanting to plant:

green beans, peas, carrots, cucumber, peppers, romaine lettuce, broccoli, cantalope, pumpkins, dill, basil, and oregano

[june'smom]

My garden is about 50' by 18'.  I plant one row of each thing (the short way).  The cukes (and anything else that will spread) will need to be in mounds.  If you want to have enough veggies to eat and store for the winter, you will need more than one row.  I usually have around 4 broccoli plants, a few tomatoes and a few pepper plants. 

I would plant the herbs separately, as they will take over the rest of your garden.  Basil will spread like a disease. 

My dad told me when I started my garden to put some stuff in the ground and see how it goes.  Lots of people overthink gardening and it really isn't that hard.  Every year you will change things and rearrange and try to make it better.  I will plant less of some things this year (beans) and more of others (garlic, peas, and broccoli) for our family. 

[HeatherAtHome]

Those are NOT stupid questions and exactly what I was wondering last spring! 

Like PP mentioned, just throw some seeds down BUT keep a garden journal so you know what to expect the next year. Here's my harvest numbers from last year. Oh, with the potatoes, I planted 5lbs white and 5lbs red. Ended up getting 20lbs of one and 60lb of the other for a total of 80lbs which lasted us (2 adults) until February so I'll plant more next year. For the tomatoes, I ended up with SO much more than 32.5lbs. Most were still in the garden at that point! I sort of planted too many tomato plants and had them way too close together (to be honest, I thought they were going to die but they flourished!) There were maybe 27 plants? So I will be doing that differently this  year. ;)

I'm learning there's a lot of trial and error involved with so many variables (location, weather, climate, amount of sun, pests etc). Keep notes of when and how things grew. You may think you'll remember it the next year but you won't! 

[mindymom]

Originally Posted by HeatherAtHome 

I'm learning there's a lot of trial and error involved with so many variables (location, weather, climate, amount of sun, pests etc). Keep notes of when and how things grew. You may think you'll remember it the next year but you won't! 

It depends a lot on your growing conditions and the variety of plant you select.  Unless you are growing food full time you will almost always be able to use everything you grow, assuming you only plant things you actually want to eat.  (And with the possible exception of zucchini / summer squashes, which can get away from you...)  For your first garden I would base the size and amount you plant on how much gardening you want or are able to do and then use notes from this year's results to make adjustments next year.

[Hykue]

Not stupid questions at all!  I've heard that it's pretty usual for first-time gardeners to make their gardens too big, get too ambitious, and then get overwhelmed.  That's sort of what I did, but it still worked out okay.  Things to think about regarding garden size:  how much time do you have to garden (are you homeschooling some of the time, how much help will your kids be, how much trouble will your kids be, etc), how much time will your garden take.  This second bit depends quite a lot on what you're converting to garden.  I don't know what your weeds are in MO, but if you're trying to garden in what is now a patch of weeds, there will be a lot of weeding.  There are some weeds that quickly move into newly disturbed soil . . . here it's quack grass, but you don't have that there (well, my parents don't in AR).   Anyway, my point is to look around and see if you think it's going to be a ton of weeding or if it might not be too bad.  Since this is your first time, you won't really know, but you'll probably be able to get some idea.  If it looks like weeds are already flourishing, scale down a little.  Especially with new gardens, weeding seems to be the major time draw.

Harvest amounts:  This really is extremely variable, depending on variety, climate, weather, growing season length, and pure luck.  But I'm a data nerd and put together a database with rough estimates of harvest amounts for a bunch of plants (from books, not from my personal experience).  It's in metric, so it will be for strange measurements, but I'll convert it . . .

green beans - about 2-2.5 pounds per three feet of row.  I don't get anywhere near this much, probably because our season is short and because I always miss some until they're huge and hard - which makes that plant stop flowering.  Probably you get higher yields per plant with less plants, because you can pay more attention to them.

peas - 3 pounds per three feet of row.  This is probably about right for me, if you're counting the shells.  I try to grow sugar snaps, because you can eat the shells as well as the peas, so you get a lot more edible stuff out of the same area.  Shelling peas freeze better, but about 2/3 of the harvest is shells (which make great compost or animal food, but it's labor intensive).  I like peas so much that I grew about 30 feet of sugar snaps last year (and ate nearly all of them fresh), and another 30 feet of shelling peas, which when frozen lasted us until maybe December.  I think in your climate, they'll still be producing until November.

carrots - 7-8 pounds per three feet of row.  I don't think I get this much . . . seeding thinly or thinning them out well when they're about 4" tall really helps to increase yields.  And big varieties like Royal Chantenay produce a lot more per foot of row than smaller kinds, like the half-long types.

cucumbers - a different book I have recommends at least three plants per person.  I don't know if it's me, or my climate, but I've planted three plants for the last two years, and each year we've gotten about 5 small cucumbers.  They need a lot of water, I think.

peppers - 3-6 plants per person (this is for sweet peppers).  I think last year we had 8 plants that produced, and that was just about right for the two of us.  With a longer season and better (warmer) growing conditions, you would get more production, but it would also be more spread out . . . and you could pick them when they were actually ripe!

lettuce - 2 pounds per three feet of row.  I don't know about this, but I do know that the way to plant lettuce is spaced out in time.  Every year I intend to do this, and fail.  I would plant no more than two to four lettuces at a time, but I would do that every week.  Just think, how many heads of romaine lettuce would you eat in a week if you had free reign?  Plant that many every week throughout the growing season.  It's a great idea.  I never manage to do it, but I hope you do.

broccoli - 2 pounds per three feet of row.  I have yet to get a broccoli, so I can't tell you how true this is.

cantaloupe - I don't know, but my parents always end up with a lot of cantaloupe and give a bunch away, so either they plant too many plants or they're very productive

pumpkins - this really depends on the variety and what you want them for.  I grow pie pumpkins, I had three or four plants last year, our season is short and it was a pretty cool rainy season, bad for pumpkins.  I still have a few left, some of which are getting moldy and need to be tossed.  Pumpkins take up a lot of room, but they're a lot of fun to grow, so I would just grow up to three if you have room.

dill - this is the easiest herb to grow, at least up here.  It will pop up absolutely everywhere from your first year on, if you let it go to seed.  They're easy to pull and make weeding smell nice.  If you're planning on pickling, or really like dill (like my DH), I would grow about 10 plants.  If you just use it once in a while, probably two would be plenty.

basil and oregano - no idea.

Finally, I don't know if you don't like it, but okra grows like mad down there - you just give it somewhere to climb and it goes nuts.  I think it would be fun to grow, because it is so vigorous, and my parents haven't reported any pest problems with it (unlike tomatoes, for example).

Have fun!
 

[lmonter]

A simple answer?  Get your hands on a copy of Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew, some graph paper, and have some fun. 

If you plan to do dry farming/no irrigation/watering, then find yourself a copy of Steve Solomon's Gardening When it Counts and sit down with some graph paper.  There's things out there like PlanGarden or whatnot, but if it's not free I tend to wander back to my pencil and paper standby.  :)  (PlanGarden had a month trial period last I checked though, if you're into cute/fun stuff like that - but I'm too cheap to pay for it.)

[nathansmum]

I came across this cool website last week which allows you to plan out your garden. It then gives you instructions on when to sow the seeds. I reckon it's based on the square foot gardening method and high-yield (ie close planted).

If you pick any of the garden types, then there is a button to customise/edit garden. Drag the veges that you want to plant into the boxes and it does it all for you and gives you the instructions.If nothing else, it's fun lol.

[RosieL]

nathansmum - Nice site! Thanks for the link.

[SuzyLee]

To throw out a number, for a first garden I would something like 12' square.