Someone was asking how much garden to plant to feed three people. Let's do some calculations.
In my most productive year, I grew ½ gallons of dry beans on a 10 ft long trellis. A half gallon of dry beans weighs roughly 3.5 lbs.
You need roughly 60 lbs of dry beans per person to live off of for a year. From my garden efficacy numbers, that 60 lbs could be produced on 171.43 ft of trellis. For three people, that comes to 514.29 feet of trellis.
A more realistic diet would include a range of other crops, but you'd need the same order of magnitude of garden area.
A home garden is not the solution to food not being available.
However, if you have the time, resources, and land to grow a garden, it can supplement the nutrition you have in your diet while relying on farmers to meet your basic caloric needs.
@quixoticgeek The numbers will differ for different places. I'm at 45°N, with a fairly short growing season.
At my latitude, I have to organize my gardens by height along the south-north axis to prevent the taller ones from shading out the shorter ones. Where I grew up in the south, this was not a realistic concern.
Those growing further south can have multiple crops in rotation throughout the year. I mostly only have one crop for any given area of the garden (though I aim to improve this).
@thebiologistisn these numbers are based on the UK, so ~51°N.
To throw another data point in the works. I've done several years where I've been entirely self sufficient in salad for a single person, from some ice-cream tubs on a 1m long south facing window sill.
The reality is many crops are so cheap, self sufficiency isn't worth it. Potatoes, onions, dry beans. But using the same area for expert crops like raspberries and the like can be very cost effective.
@quixoticgeek @thebiologistisn
7.2 sq meters with a cold frame is just about enough to make sure you've got a veg to go with most dinner for one or two in a mild climate.
250sqm should get you about a ton of potatoes, which comes out to about 2000 calories per day, or a quarter of what you need for a family of four. It should be more than enough to cover all the veg needs for a family of four, but you still will need carbs and protein.
We've got 5 acres (~2 ha) in central Arkansas that we're slowly converting into a specialty produce farm. I ran calculations once, speculating about sustainability. We could, with luck, support around 6 people, with enough spare to sell.
To do that, we'd still need to bring in about 1 ton of nitrogen, and about half a ton of other nutrients. We'd also be basically doing nothing but tending crops all year.
I've seen claims in books that you can fully feed a person on 300-400 square meters. I've never heard from a person who has actually lived that claim.
Dr. Darren Abbey
Quixoticgeek
epicdemiologist
John Timaeus