Calculating Storage
For this particular article we’re going to pick a popular item, tomatoes. The first step is to figure out how much you need to put into storage for your year’s supply. In my case, we’re going to say that we’ll have a tomato based meal once per week, so let’s round that out to 50 meals. Since most of those meals will be a tomato based sauce of some kind, home canning 50 pint jars should do the trick.
Check your canning guide book for quantities needed for home canning. A little math may be required. In my case the USDA Guide to Home Canning (available here for free to gold members) indicates that 14 lbs is required for 9 pints. Doing the math that works out to about 1.5 lbs per pint. That said, we would need about 75 lbs (1.5 X 50) of fresh tomatoes to reach our goal.
Calculating Plants
With some online research, we can confidently say that a tomato plant should produce about 10 lbs of tomatoes. Of course this will depend on soil and weather conditions, as well as differences in varieties, but it’s a good base to start with. With that we can see that we will need 7-8 plants for our storage needs. For safety’s sake, I would add some more as we could experience a bad growing season, require some for fresh eating, and not to forget we will need to save some seeds. A dozen plants should do the trick. If we end up with a bumper crop, so be it.
Calculating Seeds
In this particular case, we will need to start these tomato seeds indoors well before the last frost date, but even for crops that would be sown directly outdoors later in the spring, the estimations are the same. Notice I mentioned estimations this time and not calculations. That’s because there is a bit of a guessing game to seed starting. Germination rates may vary and there will be plant losses along the way. You will also want to plant more than you need and choose the healthiest plants to produce your crops. Of course, as always, practice helps. As you learn, you will be more successful and have less loses, so get practicing this skill now while times are still good.
For my 12 plants, I’m going to estimate a 50% loss rate. I picked this number because I’m not very experienced when it comes to indoor seed starting and have had that loss rate in the past. I might be better this year, but let’s not chance it. This means I’m going to start 24 plants from seed in my indoor greenhouse.
Follow these guidelines for every crop you plan to grow. With a little research and math, you’ll know just how many seeds you will need to get your garden started.
Summary
- Decide how much produce you want to store for a year’s supply
- Research and discover yields per plant
- Calculate plants needed to achieve your goal
- Build in safety margins for losses
- Practice, practice, practice