Topic: How many to grow...?

[Harry]

I know it's 'how long is a piece of string' but can anyone help sanity check my apportioning space for growing various crops.?

Feeding two adults and aspiring to get a decent contribution to our staple diet spuds/peas/carrots/tomatoes intake. We don't eat much outside of those. We barely eat greens.

Last year I grew a lifetime supply (or that's how it felt) of beetroot, but only two big portions of peas and spuds. I want to get the scale more sensible.

How do you guys allocate space so as not to get gluts and shortages? Or do you maybe do swapsies with your beetroot glut? Grow now, worry later?

I suppose I need an estimated yield per plant for the various things I grow. Also, I need to consider what can be left in the ground still growing while i'm harvesting. All of this is before I even consider progressive or second sowings.

So, how does this sound..... Do these yields sound crazy?
15 seed spuds planted, to hopefully give me about 20kg of harvest?
About 40 peas sown to  hopefully yield 2kg.
About 75 onion sets to hopefully yield 8kg
Hundreds of carrot seeds over 2 sq m to hopefully yield 5kg
20 or so Assorted tomato seedlings to yield maybe 2kg I could use far more, but growing space is not ideal.

I don't want wasted food, or effort or money, so all advice is welcome.

[Tulipa]

The only thing that stands out to me is that you might want to stagger your peas by sowing earlies and lates or they might all come at once, although you can freeze them.  20 tomato plants should give you plenty and of course you can pick them green at the end of their season to bring inside and ripen, or if they get blight.  Carrots you can bury in a clamp to extend their season. Onions you can plait or store in net bags in a garage, yes all sounds fine, hope you get a good growing season...

[Tulipa]

Oh and greens from the allotment taken straight home and cooked can taste so different from shop bought.  Maybe try one little experiment each year?  You never know...

[JanG]

In my experience it’s quite difficult to grow enough peas to satisfy a love of peas for very long. For this reason many people grow mangetout and/or sugar snap to supplement as the yield is higher.

I agree with Tulipa that staggering the sowing helps enormously, though with later sowings of peas there’s always a risk of mildew.

Carrots can be sown successionally too, to give availability for much of the year, fresh as well as from storage.

If you eat onions, what about considering leeks, garlic?

20 tomato plants should give you far more than 2kg. You could certainly cut down on those if space is limited.

Given that you can store onions, is 8kg enough?

[Paulh]

Runner beans and climbing French beans - and courgettes - are among the most productive in terms of space used and length of season. They also need little more than watering once they are growing. Mind you, on an allotment you'll have access to others' surplus anyway as they'll queue to give it away to you!

We find freezing French and runner beans leaves them tasting watery, which is OK. We tend to make extra quantities of ratatouille-style sauces and freeze those. That addresses the bean and courgette gluts.

[Tee Gee]

This is typical of how I used to plan my planting,sowing on the allotment and it worked well for me

https://www.thegardenersalmanac.co.uk/Content/C/Computers/Computers.htm

[Harry]

Thanks all, for all the answers. It sounds like I'm in the right ball park.

I'll try to succession sow peas and carrots at something like monthly intervals.
I'll be freezing, dehydrating and making sauces to preserve any surpluses (wishful thinking  ) Spud yield is a big unknown. So is carrot where seeds were dropped in in clusters, so they may crowd each-other. I can't bring myself to cull them.

I'm just hoping my sowings survive without too much loss to pests, disease, weeds*, neglect

*B45tard Bindweed and mares tail! 

courgettes - are among the most productive in terms of space used and length of season....they'll queue to give it away to you!

Courgettes. Tell me about it  I got Sooooo many from just 3 plants.

[Beersmith]

Your greatest friend is your own experience.  We can all make well meaning suggestions but gluts and shortages are often the result of things that cannot be controlled.  Droughts, blight, pests and diseases can hit yields very severely, but equally the omens are sometimes favourable and massive gluts result.

After a few seasons you will have adjusted your sowing and planting and space allocation to suit your own requirements but it is worth thinking about back up strategies. For example, your yield of carrots will be far higher grown under insect mesh as carrot fly in bad years can make a high proportion inedible.  Try holding back some onion sets until May as allium leaf miner is at its peak in March and April, or even consider putting them under mesh during spring.

The one thing that surprises me about your choice of vegetables is the absence of French and runner beans.  Surely the very best of allotment products.  But one man's meat and all that.

[Beersmith]

P.S.

Thinning carrots increases yields. Tightly clustered they just never achieve any size.

[Harry]

The one thing that surprises me about your choice of vegetables is the absence of French and runner beans.  Surely the very best of allotment products.  But one man's meat and all that.

Thanks. I think I'll try for a glut of everything and preserve what survives.
I'm already realising that having the allotment will be much more than anything I tackled before. Already stewing about weeds and mites and blights 
I will sow some french and/or runner beans, but truth is, we just so incredibly rarely eat them. I'd rather grow okra, but I've had no luck with those.

[Harry]

P.S.

Thinning carrots increases yields. Tightly clustered they just never achieve any size.

I'll compromise :) Any that I thin out, I'll replant.
Lidl do carrot seeds stuck on paper tape spaced out.

[JanG]

Replanting carrots doesn’t work. It’s well nigh impossible to replant with the fine tap root intact, so if you get anything at all it will be stunted and misshapen.

[Beersmith]

At the risk of going off at a tangent have you given any thought to the other potential crops you could grow?  Relative to the effort put in you can get superb value from growing soft fruit, herbs and even flowers.  Last year I suspect that the most valuable harvest throughout the whole season was a large bunch of peonies that would have set you back at least £10 from any florist. 

I've had an allotment for a long time but my interest really took off about ten years ago when I expanded my ambitions beyond just growing vegetables.  At an even greater tangent, how about an asparagus bed?.  I have a small bed and while not hugely productive, the flavour of the early harvest is beyond belief.  What about a wild flower patch?  Mine has a range of bee friendly flowers growing around the base of my hazelnut bushes. Even if I never get any yield the pleasure of simply watching it in summer is worth the rent on its own. This is one of my most recent ventures and the bushes are young so only a few nuts so far but something to look forward to, as is prospect of a harvest from my kiwi vine. 

The possibilities are almost endless. . .

[Harry]

At the risk of going off at a tangent have you given any thought to the other potential crops you could grow?  Relative to the effort put in you can get superb value from growing soft fruit, herbs and even flowers.  Last year I suspect that the most valuable harvest throughout the whole season was a large bunch of peonies that would have set you back at least £10 from any florist. 

I've certainly given thought to the value add potential of crops, such that I planned NOT to grow carrots and spuds because they are so cheap to buy. I will be growing them, but I'd really LOVE to have masses of valuable tomatoes, okra, peppers etc.
I'm going to try to nurture the raspberries and strawberries and rhubarb already on my plot. ( though I would struggle to use any glut of raspberries )
But short of having potential to trade what I grow I can't really use flowers and I don't really like asparagus enough to grow it.
With food price increases, I might be glad of the odd bunch or home grown carrots.

[Beersmith]

Of course it is entirely your choice.  Just throwing in a few suggestions.

Excess raspberries and strawberries can be used to make jam cheaper and better tasting than any you can buy.

[Paulh]

Surplus raspberries, blackberries and rhubarb we just wash (cut up the rhubarb in chunks) and freeze. They are used in crumbles and such like over the year. Jam and pickles (runner bean chutney is so good!) we buy from WI and church stalls, to outsource the hassle, though my wife does still make (very good) marmalade.

[Harry]

Surplus raspberries, blackberries and rhubarb we just wash (cut up the rhubarb in chunks) and freeze. They are used in crumbles and such like over the year. Jam and pickles (runner bean chutney is so good!) we buy from WI and church stalls, to outsource the hassle, though my wife does still make (very good) marmalade.

Thanks,
We still have to adapt our diets so as to eat what we grow. E.g. we still haven't eaten last years pickled beetroot and courgette. Some talk of storing such pickles and jams for maybe three months, but we just don't eat such things as pickles and chutneys at anything like that rate.
I must say that runner bean chutney is a whole new concept to me! thanks.

[Tulipa]

Chutney keeps for a long time, in fact it takes 3 months to mature first before using and keeps for a couple of years in a dry cool cupboard. Jam is the same in that it will keep 2 years and still have the same flavour.  The vinegar in chutney and the high sugar content of jam keep them safe for a long time. I do always store them in a fridge after opening, when I was young we didn't do that but I like to err on the safe side.  Harry we will have you converted in a couple of years time :)

[Tulipa]

https://www.allotments4all.co.uk/smf/index.php/topic,20752.msg212085.html#msg212085

This rhubarb chutney is wonderful and can be made soon so not at a time when we have loads of preserving to do, I have made it loads of times and passed on the recipe many times too,  Definitely worth doing if you have spare rhubarb...