How to Plan Your Garden for Self-Sufficiency

Calculate Your Needs

Before you plant a single seed or transplant, there are some important questions you should answer about your family’s food needs to make your veggie garden as efficient as possible. For example:

• How many people will my garden support? Are they adults, children, or a combination?
• What vegetable likes and dislikes do my family members have?
• Which vegetables are the most versatile in how they can be used in meals?
• What variety of vegetables will support the best balance of nutritional and dietary needs?
• How much space for food storage do I have available?

To get a specific number, calculate how many pounds of specific vegetables from the grocery store your family consumes in a typical week, and then multiply that by 52. Then, assess its average yield to determine the number of plants you need to meet your family’s needs.

With any vegetable garden, there’s always a risk that issues like germination failure, weather patterns or pests can negatively affect your harvest. To mitigate this, you can plant a larger number of plants, often 10 to 20 percent, than your calculations call for.

You likely won’t calculate any of this perfectly, especially in your beginning years, and that’s ok. Even when you start small, every positive step you take, no matter how simple, is another building block to a self-sufficient lifestyle.