How do you know how much to plant?

[Cerbiesmom]

I've been planting a few plants here and there of different types, just to see what will grow, and how well, etc. How do I figure out how much to plant for me to actually get substantial use? I just know I need more than what I planted this year, lol.

[garden5]

What kinds of plants are your growing? Some plants yield much more per square foot than others, so they may be a better choice if you are tight on space, but want more yield. Also, some plants will allow you plant them a little close than what's recommended and still get a good yield.

[DoubleDogFarm]

With a quick Google search, I came up with this.

https://experimentalhomesteader.com/fp/category/tips-for-stocking-up/how-much-to-plant/

Take a look, it maybe helpful.

Eric

[Shoontok]

I say plant as much as ya can as space allows and ya got the time and resources to maintain it.

Too much veggies is better then not enough. And ya could always give the excess veggies away if ya got too much.

[Ozark Lady]

I have never heard of having too much of anything, except zuchini!

Grow all you can, what you don't need, you can even barter to someone for something else.

[lorax]

There's no such thing as too much zucchinni, either!

Personally, I grow a year-round garden (which is similar in principle to you with your two cycles), and to feed my family of 3 and my upstairs neighbours (3 university students) I've got about 5' of carrots, 5' of lettuce, 12 assorted tomato plants, a dozen bush beans, three grey zucchini plants, a mini tree tomato, three hills of Atahualpa potatoes, and about two dozen assorted hot and sweet peppers. This overproduces for the 6 of us, and I'm normally giving away liter-buckets of tomatoes with lettuce and carrots to my neighbours each week (we call it "complete salad buckets"). I garden on a very small space (maybe 50 square feet if I'm generous).

[applestar]

It also has to do with what you like to eat and eat more of, and what can be easily preserved.

Last year I grew too much lettuce. I don't really eat that much lettuce -- occasional salad, a leaf or two in a sandwich... rest of the family ate even less! I was cooking down a lot of lovely lettuce just to be able to eat them, and of course I gave a lot away. I had way too many tomatoes of the wrong kind, so this year I planted a lot more of the sandwich and sauce kind and less grape and sun drying kind. More melons too this year. then, again, I planted way too many hot peppers. But hot peppers have several preserving options.

I'll be planting more onions and potatoes, and hopefully more sweet corn next year.

[hit or miss]

Depends on how you plan to store your produce until you can use it. I do a lot of canning and can put away plenty of vege's to use in the winter time. If you don't can, it makes it much harder to store for later use.

[DoubleDogFarm]

Rethinking this question.

Being a vendor at our local farmer market, quantity and variety are being persuaded by customer demand.

So family, friends and animals will persuade your decisions. A few years of gardening will help also.


Eric

[Cerbiesmom]

Thanks guys, that's all very helpful. I'm learning a lot this year, so next year I hope to be prepared, and perhaps a bit more organized. I enlarged the garden from a 3'diameter circle, to a 10x4' rectangle, so that's giving me more room to grow. This is my first fall planting, and so far I have about 6 chard plants, 10 lettuces of different kinds, 3 tomatoes, about 12 bush beans, 9 sugar and snow peas, 3-4 borage, 2 spinach (which apparently bugs really like, I'm going to have to try again with those), and I'm sure I'm forgetting things. All of those are the seeds I started myself! I'm proud. I also planted some golden zuchinni that's about to start flowering.
I've been religiously writing down everything, and I think that's going to help me next year. I've been writing when, where, and what everything is being planted next to.
One thing I know for sure, I'm planting more soybeans. That edamame was delicious.

[rainbowgardener]

That's a lot of stuff for that size bed and a big variety. One of the first things you need to learn is the difference between cool weather crops and warm weather crops. Lettuce spinach and peas are cool weather crops (as well as broccoli, carrots cabbage, beets and some other things). Their seeds do not sprout well in hot weather and the plants don't tolerate heat well, tend to fizzle out, be extra vulnerable to bugs and diseases because they are struggling, or bolt (go to seed and be finished) very quickly.

Beans, tomatoes, peppers, squash melons and others are warm weather crops, don't like it when the soil or the air temps (especially night time) are too cool, but handle heat well. (With some differences, tomatoes, like warm, but not really HOT, tend to shut down some by the time temps get up to 90). For most parts of the country this would be a good time to be planting cool weather crops for fall, though for us northerners already too late for some. You have way more frost free time left than I do. Even for you it may be a bit late for starting tomatoes. If your first frost date is early December, you may or may not actually get your first ripe tomato by then.

Here's a planting schedule for zone 9 -10 (looks like you are probably zone 9). It's just guidelines (for planting seeds), but should give you a starting point until you figure out more about what works for you. Looks like it's a little early yet for you to be planting some of the cool weather stuff like spinach.

https://www.thevegetablegarden.info/resources/planting-schedules/zones-9-10-planting-schedule

I planted borage for the first time this year and didn't like it very much. But my main reason for planting it was for attracting bees, not for eating. The leaves are coarse and hairy and didn't inspire me to eat them, though I understand you can juice them. It didn't work for me for attracting bees and it rapidly got very big and weedy. So I pulled them. They are very good for your compost pile though!

[Cerbiesmom]

Thanks rainbow, I bookmarked that site for future reference. Now I don't feel as bad that my spinach seeds crapped out on me. And I lied, I bought the tomato plants, I didn't start seeds. I just forgot, bc everything else was seeds. Blonde moment.

Another blonde moment: I planted out some lettuce seedlings monday, and I left out the notebook that said where I planted things, and it rained! I can't read any of it! So there may be "what is this" questions from me later.

I'm gonna try the borage. If I don't like it, I'm quite sure the iguana will. Or the dogs, they love greens. If it goes past all of us, then the compost can have it.