tomato plants in raised beds
When it comes to growing your own food, exactly how much garden capacity do you need?
Tomato Plant Take-Over
If I tell you that the only vegetable garden space I have is right now totally used up by my tomato plants, which produce just a handful of tomatoes a day, you’ll see that clearly I don’t have enough vegetable garden capacity to feed my family.
Fruit and Vegetables for Four
The question is, how much space would I need? And even if I used my whole suburban garden, front and back, would it be enough? Could I grow all of the vegetables needed for my family of four? What about the fruit? To find the answer to this question I’m consulting a book which sits on my family room bookshelf.
The Integral Urban House
The Integral Urban House is a book produced from a study into self-reliant living in the city carried out in San Francisco, California during the 1970s. Here is what the authors have to say “If you have a large piece of land for gardening, say 50 feet by 50 feet, you might be able to produce your family’s entire yearly vegetable supply.” That’s a total of 2,500 square feet for vegetable growing.
Space Required For Fruit?
With regard to fruit needs “The average family consumes some 151 pounds of fresh fruits each year… Between 750 and 1250 square feet is the minimum amount of soil that would be required to produce a family’s entire fruit supply.”
Garden Area To Cultivate Total
I’m going to err on the higher need, so for fruit and vegetable growth for a family of four I’d need:
- 2,500 + 1250 = 3,750 square feet
This is an area roughly 60 feet by 60 feet. My husband tells me that we currently have 7,000 square feet of grass in our yard. I might have to chop down a few trees, but the answer is a resounding “yes”, if I converted my lawn to food production I could meet my family’s fruit and vegetable needs.
Bye Bye Lawn?
Much as I’d love to say “bye, bye lawn”, things don’t turn out to be so simple. Firstly, most of my lawn is in the front yard and I’m not free to do whatever I like with that space due to local regulations. Secondly, most of my lawn grows on a relatively steep slope with a large amount of run-off when it rains – I’m not sure how I’d deal with that. Thirdly, at least half of my lawn is in the shade of mature trees which I don’t want to lose.
What Would You Do?
So, what would you be prepared to give up to grow your own fruit and veggies? Would you dig up all your lawn, or cut down mature oak trees which are some of the best for wildlife? Would you start a campaign to change local landscaping regulations and wait until you could change them? Would you defy local landscaping regulations and fight them in court if necessary?
My Plan for Growing Food
For the moment I’m going to compromise – I will take down eight trees to get more sun, but not my oaks, my red maple, or my river birch, only the trees which are causing other problems and not fulfilling their original purpose. I will extend garden beds and plant them with a combination of wildlife attracting plants and food plants for my family, removing shrubs that should never have been planted. And I will put in more vegetable beds in the sunny back yard spots available to me where I don’t want lawn.
What do you think? Would you love to grow all the fruit and veggies your family needs? Are you already doing this? Why, or why not?
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You could plant a few fruit trees and maybe a hedge of berry bushes in the front yard. With some creativity, you can do a lot of landscaping with fruit producing plants in front, where the neighbors seem to like grass better than veggies.
Could you terrace the back to help with the slope? Might be a bit expensive, but it looks cool when you’re done. We’re hoping to move to a small acreage to produce a good quantity of our own fruits and veggies as well as chickens and goats.
Dana, these are great suggestions. I especially like the idea of having fruit growing out front. I want to replace some non-fruit bushes out front anyway so fruit bushes sound like an ideal replacement.
I think that the slope issue could be dealt with, if you had the right equipment and patience. After all, terrace farming works. But, if this is in an area that is regulated (bleah!) then you have other problems to contend with. We have some slope, but not enough to cause major problems. We too are considering how to effectively grow fruit and vegetables to subsist on… I’ll let you know what we come up with. Right now we have enough vegetables growing to get us through the summer and for fruit we have Nanking Cherries, Elderberries, a Pear tree (have to get another),Eidleweiss grapes, wild raspberries, Everbearing strawberries, and various apple trees (one of which needs to come down, it’s interfereing with the power line). In a few years these will all be good producers, another thing to remember: fruit takes time! But for now we’re still trucking to the store for much of our fruit.