The Home Almanac

Vol. I, MMXXVIThe American home, in season.Across all fifty states

How Much to Plant to Feed Your Family

Pick your crops and your household and get how many plants of each to grow, and the total garden square footage it adds up to, worked from university extension plant-per-person and spacing tables. Sized for square-foot beds.

Goal

Crops to grow

How it is worked out

Each crop carries a recommended amount per person for fresh eating, drawn from university extension planting guides. Multiply by your household, then by the spacing each crop needs in a square-foot bed, and the per-crop areas add up to the garden you need. The preserving setting adds a flat half again across the board, because real canning and freezing needs vary a lot by crop and a single honest multiplier beats made-up per-crop numbers.

Read it as a starting point

Yields swing with climate, soil, variety, and the season, so these are planning figures, not a harvest guarantee. Adjust for what your household actually eats, and remember vining crops like winter squash and pumpkins sprawl well past their square footage.

Sources

Per-person amounts and spacing: University of Missouri Extension (G6201), Rutgers NJAES (FS129), Colorado State University Extension (GardenNotes 721), NC State Extension Gardener Handbook (Table 16-1), and West Virginia University Extension. Where sources differ we use the mid of the range; the preserving multiplier is a single household average, not a per-crop figure.

Planting Grid DesignerLay out a square-foot bed, drop in crops, and get each one’s sowing and harvest dates.Frost & Planting CalendarEvery vegetable’s sow-and-plant window, worked from your station’s frost dates.Succession Planting PlannerSow lettuce, beans, and radishes in waves for a steady harvest, not one glut.Raised Bed Soil Mix CalculatorCompost, peat or coir, vermiculite, or topsoil for a Mel’s Mix or a topsoil-and-compost fill, by the bag and the yard.