Care to share some very general vegetable growing rules/guidelines?

[TwinCitiesPanda]

I'm trying to decide how much area I need to clear for my veggie garden. To do that I had to decide what to grow (done), buy seeds (done) and decide how many of each item to grow (my current troubles). There are just two of us here, but I'm hoping to have enough food to can/freeze/otherwise store a decent amount. Its a fine balance though. I don't want to grow too much and be slaving away all my time trying to preserve too much food. On the other hand I've heard first-year gardens can be pretty low-yield.

My basic trouble is not knowing how much food I'll get from anything. My pumpkins say they average 2 pumpkins per plant, at 10-15 lbs each. I was going to plant just 1 hill, with 3 plants. I have no idea if this is way too much or too little. How many quarts of pumpkin puree should I expect from this? How many seeds should I plant to try and get 3 viable ones to transplant? Take this pumpkin problem, extend it to the 15ish vegetables I want to grow, and I'm really in a pickle trying to sort out how many seeds to sow, or how big a garden bed I need.

So, to the point, how do you decide all this: how much of a thing you'd like to grow, and how many seeds to sow to get that number, how many jars you'll need to preserve it, and even how much processing time you expect?

Any guidance at all would be much appreciated.

 

[Carol Dee]

Welcome to TEG @TwinCitiesPanda
You ask some very good questions. I am stumped and have gardened for Many Years. There are so many variables! Weather is a big one. Pests another. We can plant the same number plants from year to year and one year have surplus and the other barely enough to enjoy for the season and nothing to put up for winter! I find too much is better than too little. You can always find some one willing to take the surplus. Except maybe zucchini Can't help with pumpkins. We try to grow them for the kids/grandkids jack-o-lanterns and never get much at all. Good Luck.
Also can you let us know what state and zone you live in, it might help others to answer questions.

 

[TwinCitiesPanda]

Oh I’m sorry, I though my zone would appear near my title. I’ll have to add that. I’m zone 4- twin cities MN.

I have lots planned for the garden this summer: pumpkins, watermelons, carrots, beets, turnips, broccoli, onions, peppers, bean, peas, and Brussels sprouts and
A few others. I’m just totally befuddled trying to decide how much.

 

[Carol Dee]

Oh I’m sorry, I though my zone would appear near my title. I’ll have to add that. I’m zone 4- twin cities MN.

I have lots planned for the garden this summer: pumpkins, watermelons, carrots, beets, turnips, broccoli, onions, peppers, bean, peas, and Brussels sprouts and
A few others. I’m just totally befuddled trying to decide how much.

I am near Davenport IA also a zone 4/ We tend to always plant too much. Looks like pretty much the same vegetables we do!

 

[baymule]

I don't worry about how much to plant for x amount of return. I plant what I have room for, sometimes I have a LOT and sometimes I get very little.
Welcome to the forum. It helps if you put your general location on your avatar. After you post several times, we'll NEVER remember where you said you are!

 

[Zeedman]

Ditto on @Carol Dee 's comments. Some general advice, my apologies in advance if this goes a little long...

How much to plant of anything is a complicated question. It depends to a great extent upon how much space is available, the amount of time you will be able to devote to the garden, and what your personal priorities are. For a new garden, it is especially important to optimize the use of space. I certainly don't want to be discouraging... but it may not be possible to grow everything you want the first year. You can continue to expand the garden(s) as new ground is broken.

If the garden site is not bare dirt ready for planting, it will take time to prepare. This means that it is unlikely you will be able to plant much of an early garden this year. In our Midwest climate, cool-weather vegetables (such as peas & broccoli) need to be planted either in early Spring (to avoid heat) or in late Summer, for Fall harvest. If you plan to grow those, my advice would be to plant them late this year. Prep the area for warm-weather vegetables first - beans, tomatoes, peppers, squash, watermelon, etc.

If you can get only one thing planted early, let it be onions. Bulbing is triggered by day length, so if you plant them late, all you will get is scallions.

After planting the warm-weather vegetables, you could then prep an additional area later for a Fall garden. When starting a new garden, it is not a bad idea to expand it slowly anyway... prepping new ground is hard work, unless done with machinery.

If you intend to grow pumpkins for puree, keep in mind that pumpkins are space hogs, with long vines... and space will be at a premium this year. I would recommend growing squash for that purpose instead, such as Bush Buttercup, or Butterbaby butternut; both have very fine-quality flesh, on more compact plants. Not bad baked & buttered either, which you can't say about pumpkin. Compared to other squashes & pumpkins, a very large percentage of a butternut squash is usable (most commercial canned "pumpkin" is actually butternut), so for processing, it might be the best choice. Unless you want gallons of processed pumpkin, chances are that you would only need 3-4 plants or so. Butternut is also more resistant to the squash vine borer, which kills so many squash plants here. I cover young squash plants with floating row cover until they begin blooming, at which point the cover must be removed to allow pollination. Usually the egg-laying period for SVB has passed by then, and squash bugs & cucumber beetles are also reduced or eliminated... so I highly recommend that method.

Watermelon is a space hog too; and because it requires a fairly long period of heat to ripen, it can be hit-or-miss here, depending upon weather. A short-season variety would offer your best chance for success. I have had good results with Yellow Doll (hybrid) or Blacktail Mountain (OP). Both of those have good flavor, and few problems with cracking. They also have relatively compact vines, as does Sugar Baby (which I have not grown personally). Using black agricultural plastic around the plants will help to warm the soil & keep weeds down.

I'm assuming the beans will be for use as snaps? Pole beans will give you the best yield, over a longer period than bush beans. If you plant a row on the North side of the bed, their shade will not fall on other vegetables, which can then be spaced closely on the South. Keep the plants picked to prolong the harvest; any pods allowed to mature will reduce the formation of new flowers. If you plant bush beans, decide if you want one large harvest (for canning) or a more sustained yield for fresh eating. Plant a whole row or bed at once for canning, or do smaller staggered plantings for harvest over a longer period.

For members of the cabbage family, caterpillars are likely to be the biggest problem. You can either use Bt spray (an organic toxin that only targets caterpillars) or use floating row cover to prevent the butterflies & moths from laying their eggs.

Squirrels can be a problem, as they were for me last year. They dug up most of my emerging bean seedlings. A pepper spray was ineffective. A friend recommended a granular repellent, Repels-all, which I tried... there were few problems with squirrels after that. If you are borderline suburban/rural, you might eventually find mice to be a greater problem than squirrels, in which case plastic mouse traps may be your best option. Voles in particular can be very damaging, I probably trap 30-50 in the gardens each year.

For all seeds, plant more than you need, and thin to the strongest plants when the chances of loss to weather, pest or disease have passed. Even then, you will probably lose a few plants to the unexpected... which is the reason, as @Carol Dee mentioned, that we over-plant if possible. Don't wait too long to thin carrots, though, or you'll be sorry.

 

[flowerbug]

@Zeedman going long in TEG is enjoyed! all good advice you wrote there.


@TwinCitiesPanda

there is a lot of variability even within crop types so it can be hard to say exactly what will happen not counting all the combinations of factors that can come about from the weather, soil, sun, animals, etc.

i can recommend one thing to get in the habit of. keep records of what you plant and the condtions you experience and some idea of the return. even if it just quick notes it can help learning. some years i do better than others.

there are ten food plants i try to concentrate upon because of my gardening preferences are aimed at growing what we like to eat the most and fitting that in with my hobby and what makes me happiest.

i also have a few on the side i grow for their flowers or leaves or stems and the fact that i eat a few at times but because Mom doesn't like them i don't have a huge investment in space/time for them nor do i go out of my way to always plant or maintain them.


main crops:

peas, strawberries, beans, onions, garlic, red peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers/pickles, dill and squash.


side crops:

turnips, rhubarb. chives, garlic chives, green garlic and radish sprouts.


other things:

these do not include all the rest of the plants we have, some which are also edible but mainly grown for their flowers or ground cover habit (thyme), a few grown for green manure (good natural N sources) all sorts of spring flowering bulbs, annual flowers like cosmos, irises, creeping jenny, clovers, alfalfa, birdsfoot trefoil, clematis, phlox, butterfly weed/bush, sedum, ferns, lilacs, baptisia, astibile, daisies, bachelor buttons, echinacea, violets, yarrows, comfrey, black-eyed susans, lillies, anemones, buckwheat, winter rye, winter wheat, bergamot, bee balm, lavender, mints, columbines, sunflowers, berry bushes for the birds and/or bees. ...

going back to the main crops we only plant certain varieties because of Mom's preferences. like for tomatoes she only likes Beefsteaks so that is what we grow. we used to grow cherry tomatoes but we can't keep up with even one plant now in terms of eating them so we stopped wasting space on them. our average production for the beefsteaks falls in the range 20-40lbs per plant. with 1 quart coming from about 3lbs of picked fruits. 7 quarts per 5 gallon bucket. we have planted between 12 and 30-40 plants and keep it at the low end now because we don't use as many now as before. putting up about 100quarts a year is enough.

cucumbers sprawl, so planted 4-8ft apart depending upon how much room i have. putting up about 100quarts of pickles on between 12-15 plants. pickling cucumbers (which are smaller than the huge ones that burpees can provide).

for the garlic 20-30 large cloves are planted - if i want green garlic i plant a lot more deeper and not so much space (because the plants will be harvested early).

onions i usually plant a large flat of started giant sweet onions and i'll seed some in here or there or plant sets (small bulbs that someone else or i have grown).

this year i'm trying bunching onions and hoping to expand the production of those as i get going on them and seeing how they work out.

red peppers are among my favorites, so i grow between one and two dozen plants, but i have so many roasted peppers in the freezer i may skip growing some this year.

beans are my favorite crop. i like fresh beans (green or yellow) or shelly beans (lima and others) along with the many varieties of dry beans. so i can fill in any empty spaces with these once we've figured out where everything else goes. i also would like to grow more peas as i've missed growing them the past few years due to early spring projects or injuries soaking up all my time. we'll often just eat all the peas standing in the garden so that is a good sign we should be planting more... hard for me though as i really like beans so much. choices-choices...

i try a few new things here or there to see what happens. sometimes the surprises are worth it.

 

[catjac1975]

I'm trying to decide how much area I need to clear for my veggie garden. To do that I had to decide what to grow (done), buy seeds (done) and decide how many of each item to grow (my current troubles). There are just two of us here, but I'm hoping to have enough food to can/freeze/otherwise store a decent amount. Its a fine balance though. I don't want to grow too much and be slaving away all my time trying to preserve too much food. On the other hand I've heard first-year gardens can be pretty low-yield.

My basic trouble is not knowing how much food I'll get from anything. My pumpkins say they average 2 pumpkins per plant, at 10-15 lbs each. I was going to plant just 1 hill, with 3 plants. I have no idea if this is way too much or too little. How many quarts of pumpkin puree should I expect from this? How many seeds should I plant to try and get 3 viable ones to transplant? Take this pumpkin problem, extend it to the 15ish vegetables I want to grow, and I'm really in a pickle trying to sort out how many seeds to sow, or how big a garden bed I need.

So, to the point, how do you decide all this: how much of a thing you'd like to grow, and how many seeds to sow to get that number, how many jars you'll need to preserve it, and even how much processing time you expect?

Any guidance at all would be much appreciated.

I always say start small. The planting is the easy part. The weeding will take all of your time. Forget reading the label.Give each plant enough room. You will be successful through trail and error. Pumpkins fail this year? They might boom next year. Things like lettuce, plant starts and seeds at the same time. Use successive planting to keep yourself in fresh food for long periods. I get 2 big pies out of a good sized pumpkin. It may take time to get your soil enriched. Around here we need lime stone for proper PH. Compost, compost, compost.

 

[catjac1975]

Oh I’m sorry, I though my zone would appear near my title. I’ll have to add that. I’m zone 4- twin cities MN.

I have lots planned for the garden this summer: pumpkins, watermelons, carrots, beets, turnips, broccoli, onions, peppers, bean, peas, and Brussels sprouts and
A few others. I’m just totally befuddled trying to decide how much.

I would guess that watermelons will not do well in zone 4. However, I am one that keeps pushing the limits on zones. I planted about 13 various types of brussels sprouts last year. I was my best crop ever. I eat them fresh until the hard freeze is coming. They I pick, clean, blanch and freeze like little marbles.I sill have some left. There are 2 of us but I have had many family dinner parties and a big pan of brusssels sprouts is always on the menu.

 

[catjac1975]

Oh I’m sorry, I though my zone would appear near my title. I’ll have to add that. I’m zone 4- twin cities MN.

I have lots planned for the garden this summer: pumpkins, watermelons, carrots, beets, turnips, broccoli, onions, peppers, bean, peas, and Brussels sprouts and
A few others. I’m just totally befuddled trying to decide how much.

No tomatoes?