This is probably a bit of a ' how long is a piece of string ' sort of question. But how much land would someone need to supply basic veg throughout the year ( potatos, carrots , peas , beans )
The standard 10 pole plot... 300sq yards was created to allow a family of four to grow enough veg for themselves... :-\
If you were to grow just those crops that you listed you would need much more land than if you grow variety of crops and get use of the land all year round.
I've read some study which claim that quarter of an acre can feed two people for a whole year...thought that claim doesn't include any meat, 2 vegeterians.
How many people would you want to feed with the basic veg for your guestion? And are you asking as being wanting to be self sufficient with those crops?
It would involve lot of storaging to keep all those edibles going for long winter and spring months.
I reckon to grow most of my veg for eight months. But I am growing more of the non basics which are expensive to buy.
It also depends on skill, time available, and luck.
I'd have thought you'd have to give serious consideration to what you define by "basic".... I grow heritage spuds cos I love the taste of real potatoes and value their culinary quality.... The problem is that they're not the heaviest yielding .... the classic four or five way rotation would be giving you 2 to 2.5 poles of potatoes, you can forget about raised beds at this point too, the potatoes will want an uninterrupted set of ridges running east-west for preference... then the rest would be onions and roots, cabbages and other brassicas, beans and peas and then if you had a fifth it would be tender stuff and what the greengrocers used to refer to for the most part as "queer gear".... sweetcorn, peppers, squashes, courgettes.... so maybe a greenhouse or polytunnel as part of that section. Problem is you'll quickly realise how dull the "old" diet was, spuds and cabbage/broccoli form the basis of every meal....
Sorry for the ramble :D.... I've managed to be self sufficient for spuds this last year, there was a week or two's gap between the last of the stored and the pot-grown (greenhouse) earlies, just enough time to remind myself what pasta, cous-cous and rice tasted like....
thanks for all the quick replies... I am so new to this i dont have a clue yet about what to grow and how much can you expect. I think im trying to run before i can walk ! I think if i keep posting questions its going to make me look a fool..... I need to read alot more about this i think. Right ok, now for another stupid question , how often can you grow potatoes during the year ? And can you grow them indoors?
Most years (i.e not this one! >:() we grow enough veg of many different kinds from one, albeit rather large, allotment and greenhouse at home to keep us in veg year round.
It is possible by planning what you grow and where, thinking about great tasting veg you are unfamiliar with but that can be planted or sown after early crops have been harvested. chinese veg for example.
Catch cropping, interplanting, successional sowing - all devices to get the most from your ground.
Something can be either sown or planted from january to november to keep everything ticking along.
It's staggering sometimes just how much produce a piece of land is capable of producing in a year.
When we lived on 10 acres , we had lots of lawn and gardens and a lot of Fir trees but we had one acre that was cleared.Plus some outbuildings and a meadow.
W had a good selection of fruit trees, greenhouses and a long row of cucumber frames which we used for summer veggies but also for winter gardening. Then we had the usual soft fruit bushes and perennial veggies, asparagus, rhubarb etc. The area for regular veggie gardening was about 1/3 rd of an acre, maybe a bit more.
As we also kept various poultry , goats , a couple of sheep and sometimes we ran a few baby pigs to term.
We were as near self sufficient as it is possible to get. I canned , dried and froze veggie for off season .
I guess it depends what you mean by a years supply of veg, the veggie area we had did it for us, plus the perennial and greenhouse areas , so I guess I would have to say maybe 2/3rds of an acre. For fruit tress it would be more.
Bear in mind we grew lots of sweetcorn which took up a large area not included in the regular gardening area, some of which we dried.
XX Jeannine
I grow just about all our veg, for two, on a small plot. We eat between 5-7 a day and I use the ground pretty intensively with a strict rotation. It is only 8 x 100 feet and 1/4 is used for utility and fruit
We forgot to answer your question on spuds! They are planted in early spring, depending on your climate, generally speaking you get one crop a year, but different varieties mature faster or slower. This is why you usually plant more than one type, then you dig spuds up from late May/June to October. You are a bit late to plant them now, although a maincrop variety will probably give you a small crop. Nexct year you wil lneed to plant them in March. One seed potato planted gives you between 6 and 10 potatoes, roughly, of varying sizes.
If you can find someearly potatoes you'll get a crop (not asbig as a maincrop crop butat least some) if you get them in now.... although given that earlies tend to be easily affected by blight (there's no reason for them to be bred for blight tolerance usually) You can grow potatoesin big pots in teh GH, the yields aren'tgreat but you can be planting spuds by the end of January if you're willingto care for them. Generally ionly done with oneof the modern ultra-fast earlies, TPS (true potato seed) seedlings (tokeep separation of what will be a new variety and possibly oldlong-season heritage ultra-late maincrops (like Congo) as a way of getting an early start to try adn get the harvest at a sensible time of year...
A min of land 15 feet x 40 feet would be needed to grow a years supply of potatoes, that's 600 sq ft for one crop !! then theres the onions and peas and carrots, it all takes room for things that are cheap to buy in the shops, spuds for one !! stick to normality i would.
That's about what I grow Jim, but mostly wacky (nice tasting) heritage stuff so yield isn't great.... grew enough last year (bad year cos ofdrought) to feed me right through pretty much and I gave a load of them to family too...