Garden Yields: What do I plant?

Michelle writes,

I just downloaded your e-book, Growing Groceries. We have been working to become more self-sufficient, reducing expenses. You mention in your book that can an average of 500 jars per year. We use raised beds, and the Square foot gardening method. I am trying to figure out how much I need to plant in order to can a sufficient amount for our family for the year (we have 8 children). Do you have this knowledge or know where I could find some general guidelines? I have found some information about how much to plant in a 100 foot row to yield so many pounds/bushels, but I’m not sure how well that translates to the square foot gardening method, or how many quart jars I would end up with.

Hi Michelle,
Well, it's pretty individual, and depends on what you need or will use. I think it is something you figure out as you garden, and as you see what does well for you and how many tomatoes, on average, a tomato plant produces for you, for example.

I did see a great chart in a book called "The Encyclopedia of country living" which is a great book to have anyway (it's by Carla Emery and is widely available...including an upcoming new edition), but it was also (As this is) more of an example of what she has done, and she also emphasizes that it is pretty individual and depending on what sorts of things you use a lot of. I think there is also information in the Ball Blue Book of canning and preserving. It's always going to be "best guess" though, because there are so many other factors involved in knowing just how much food you will get out of your garden, especially if you are trying to grow with plans to preserve much of it. Your yield may also vary from year to year.

I find that with the Square Foot Method, in beds that have lots of compost and good soil, there is a much higher yield, so that throws off those estimates you see elsewhere too. Also, some things may grow great for me but not for you. I have crazy-productive grapes, but no one else I know in my immediate area has grapes that grow like that. On the other hand, I can't get other things to grow well, like corn, which for me doesn't have very high yields. (thus we barter with neighbors on some things :-)).

With some items it's easy to plan. We use about 2-3 heads of Romaine type lettuce per day (We like salad), and it takes about 2 months for it to get ripe, so I start as soon as the ground isn't frozen out, planting lettuce in the cold frames (sometimes using lettuce all winter long if it is mild, as lettuce likes cold weather), and I plant enough each week for the entire season, so that I will have a continuous harvest of about 20 heads a week. Sometimes we lose a few here or there, but that's ok. You can't can or freeze lettuce and still have it quite as enjoyable, so we make sure not to overplant on that. Along with the lettuce, I also plant a staggered crop of radishes (about half a seed packet every few weeks for the entire season) to eat on the salad, and I plant carrots 3x a year(the whole packet), knowing that we will either enjoy them fresh or freeze them in slices or cubes if we can't use them all. Through trial and error we have figured out that 100 yellow and 100 red onions are about right for use in the various things we can (such as salsa) and for use until they start to go bad. We usually plant about 50 cloves of garlic in the fall each year. If I don't use it all, I make it into roasted garlic, and freeze it for use on garlic bread. I don't think you can ever have too much garlic :-))

When you can some vegetables, it depends on how you prepare them as to how many quarts you get. For example, with tomatoes, varies based on, among other things, the size of the tomatoes, how much meat is actually in them vs. water (which cooks off), and so forth.

Most of what I can includes items like tomato sauce, whole tomatoes, and salsa because we use tomato sauce or tomatoes in many dishes like spaghetti, curries, and some soups, and we use salsa with various Mexican dishes. I have figured that a flat of tomato plants (about 48 plants) will yield enough tomatoes to be enough for our family of 7, though this year we did run out early, so I planted a few more tomatoes. A teenage boy has been throwing off my grocery budget and garden plans, and last year we also got far less than normal due to the weather I think :-)) I often get tomatoes from friends who usually offer me their overflow. We also plant 48 red pepper plants (yielding about 8-10 bushels of red and partly red peppers) and 20 cucumbers (yielding about 15 bushels of cukes).

I can some jelly with the grapes from my 2 grapevines (though if I were to make as much jelly as those grape would make, I'd probably have a few hundred jars of just that!), and with raspberries (about 100 canes yielding close to a bushel I think...our raspberry pickers do a lot of eating, and you don't usually pick them in a big bushel basket anyway) and gooseberries (1 large bush yielding a good peck of berries), and we also make some drink syrups from the fruits that we don't eat fresh. The drink syrups are either used on pancakes or on and in ice cream, or mixed with water to make a fruity drink. I freeze some raspberries too for use in homemade ice cream on special occasions. We have about 100 strawberry plants, and they are usually eaten fresh, though sometimes I make some homemade ice cream with them, or use them in other recipes.

We make sweet ('bread and butter") pickles, relish, pickled beets (my husband loves those)--I plant one seed packet of beets, and chutney, which we can.

I also use some of my onions, garlic, and spices, a neighbor's plums, plus one large can of pineapple juice, to make homemade plum duck sauce, because we eat so much home cooked Chinese food.

I have two apple trees, and i also can apples and pears, as well as making apple or pear butter. My in-laws give me pears from their pear tree, and a friend gives me the peaches, nectarines and apricots from her trees. We like to eat these fresh of course, but any that are not looking so good, I usually make into a jam/jelly/butter, and some we can in slices, which the kids enjoy for lunch in the winter time.

When we still had chickens, we also canned the meat of the older hens after we slaughtered them, and cooked down the carcasses. I also canned some chicken stock. I found both were useful for quick meals especially soups or stews, and canning an old bird is about the only way to make it edible ~smile~ I miss having chickens but because of zoning changes, I can't have them anymore.

Some of my vegetables I think taste better frozen, so I freeze a lot too...beans for one, and peas, though my kids love peas fresh off the vine best. I also have lots of red peppers which i grow and I freeze the roasted red pepper sauce, which I use in many things for a seasoning. I freeze that, as well as fresh basil, fresh cilantro, fresh parsley, and fresh tarragon in ice cube trays (separately of course), storing them in zip lock baggies once they are frozen solid, and use those as needed. I also freeze some red and green peppers, and dry some of the hot chili peppers (2 plants which yield about a peck of hot peppers), as well as using them in the plum duck sauce and salsa).

I even seem to always have a generous amount of shredded zucchini in my freezer despite not growing any zucchini....it magically appears in my van after church during the months of July and August when everyone else is battling an overflow of it!