What follows is a suggestion of the number of plants you need per person. It assumes you eat a reasonable amount of vegetables, two servings per meal.
Obviously, small children eat less, so you could half their amount, and teenage boys eat more, so you might want to up it. Plus if you’re canning or otherwise storing some vegetables, or if you’re a vegetarian, you’d want to increase their number too.
Also consider your families likes and dislikes. If you all just love Swiss chard, plant more Swiss chard. If you can’t handle chili peppers (confession: I can’t!), drop it from your list.
Finally, some vegetables are real space guzzlers: do you really want to consecrate all the space necessary to growing a reasonable crop of asparagus and corn? You might want to consider buying those rather than growing your own.
- Asparagus 5–10 plants
- Bush bean 10–15 plants
- Pole bean 10–15 plants
- Beets 10–25 plants
- Bok Choy 3–5 plants
- Broccoli 3–5 plants
- Brussels sprouts 2–5 plants
- Cabbage 3–5 plants
- Carrot 15 plants
- Cauliflower 2–5 plants
- Celery 2–8 plants
- Corn 10–20 plants
- Cucumber 1–2 plants
- Eggplant 1–3 plants
- Garlic 3–5 plants
- Kale 2-7 plants
- Leek 5–15 plants
- Romaine lettuce 2–5 plants
- Leaf lettuce 20–30 plants
- Melon 1-3 plants
- Mesclun 2-7 plants
- Onion 10–25 plants
- Peas 15–20 plants
- Bell pepper 3–5 plants
- Chili pepper 1–3 plants
- Potato 5–10 plants
- Radish 10–25 plants
- Rhubarb 2 plants
- Spinach 5–10 plants
- Swiss chard 5–10 plants
- Summer squash 1–3 plants
- Winter squash 1–2 plants
- Tomatoes 1–4 plants
- Turnip 3–4 plants
- Zucchini 1–3 plants
Good gardening!