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.
Same. We also had animals, so another 3 acres or so of pasture
One of the discrepancies in these kind of conversations is, what do people consider a day's worth of vegetables?
I was planting a garden for a friend, and discovered that what he considered veggies for a family of three at dinner was FAR less than what I considered a serving for one person
Someone else in this thread said they grew a winter's worth of salads in two buckets or something. My greenhouse has 15 tubs, each a bit bigger than a 5 gallon bucket. It is not anywhere near enough vegetables for one person over the winter, but it supplements what I grow outdoors
I'm a professional at this stuff. I've been doing it all my life, and teaching it for many years. I live in a climate where we garden 12 months of the year
@NilaJones @mxjaygrant @thebiologistisn Factor in growing nutrient dense vegetables from really healthy soil and that’s another calculation needed entirely from most people’s lived experience.
It’s wonderful to hear people’s farming life stories. Not enough of us know what it’s like to grow our own food, let alone grow it for others.
@Broadfork @mxjaygrant @thebiologistisn
Distribution is hard, too
My garden / orchard on my 1/8 acre city lot is to the point where I have annual surpluses of some stuff. And I cannot get rid of it!
We have a local gleaning group, but they are really only interested in gleaning farms, not backyard stuff
I post on local mailing lists and things and people say, yeah I want to come over and get some of your surplus asian pears. Then they take three pears. They don't have the concept of getting larger quantities to preserve. Or even to eat next week
I guess urban people just have a really different way of thinking about food, that is kind of alien to me, even though I have lived in this small city for a long time
@NilaJones @mxjaygrant @thebiologistisn I can see that’s an issue. It can be just from what I grow on my little plot. Whether to grow a wide variety of produce or successionally to avoid a glut. Or have preparations in place to deal with it.
CSA veg box schemes work well in places here but they do need a lot of managing. It means small producers have to juggle a multitude of roles.
We do have a disconnect between farm and fork that needs fixing. The supermarket age is much to blame.
Dr. Darren Abbey
Jay Grant 🏳️⚧️
NilaJones
Broadfork