how much is enough?

planting fall crops now and trying to avoid the problem i had w/ spring garden. (TOO MUCH OKRA NOT ENOUGH SQUASH.) to have enough for fresh use only how many plants or feet of double row do you need for 3 people of basicly all crops?

also, once crops start producing how long will they bear fruit before you need to pull and replant? especially beans and brussell sprouts.

Maybe this will help you figure it out.
http://www.growingvegetablegardens.com/planHowMany.html

If you look around you'll find some good information on that website.

This message was edited Sep 27, 2010 4:44 PM

No such thing as too much for me because whatever we do not consume goes to the food pantry at church. Our clients loves fresh produce. Belle

quyen, thanks so much. for a pc newbie like me this is a great website. belle, don't mind sharing extra but even they got tired of okra.

I always plant like half of the plants will die, and then they don't die and I have way too many, but if i plant too little they definitely die. I am probably cursed.

Prettymess, your post made me laugh. I feel that way at times, too.

Mel Bartholemew of Square Foot Gardening says that two 4'x4 raised beds can feed one person all season long. I'm not sure what that works out into in row planting but that is 32 squares of intensive sowing. I would guess that on average that is at least 64' of row planting. So for three people you would need 180' - 225' of rows. As prettymess says, you probably need to assume 50% loss as youre a beginner.

Hope this helps - or convinces you to try SFG ;)

I thought I would get 50% loss too, but everything worked, I must have a secret green thumb. I got tons of tomatoes, with no BER, no sign of horn worms, and the only problems I had was with rats eating them. They actually got so big they fell over and the tomatoes that fell into the soil I couldn't reach so there will probably be tons of volunteers all over the yard next spring. I also got lots of green beans and cuckes until the cucumber beetle got them and the vines started dying. I still consider it a huge success.

I have had no luck with squash, the first two plants i had died and produced only one very small zuc with BER. I have two lovely plants now, but not very many zucchini and the leaves are starting to get the white mold on them! I don't water on the leaves so I am not sure what happened, I think I am blaming the cucumber beetle!