Allotment Stuff > The Basics

How many to grow...?

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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.

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