Grow Your Own Food Challenge
Week 1: Planning & Prepping
Let’s get your garden started!
The garden is as unique as you. There is no real right or one way to do anything. A garden is like a 3D vision board, where you literally sow your creativity and reap the rewards of nature’s bounty.
Just as a blueprint is important to build a beautiful and structurally sound house, a plan for your garden is important. Yes, you can be spontaneous and expand as you go, but having even a rough sketch of what you want for your garden will result in less failures and more yield. And it’s also super fun to do!
Let’s go through some practical steps to design your garden!
What do I want to grow?
When designing, we need to look at the availability of space, but first, let’s think about the end goal: what you want to get out of your garden!
Here are some questions you want to ask:
1) How much food do I want to grow? Enough to add some fresh veggies to my meals a few times a week, or do I want enough food for my family to survive off of all year?
2) Depending on what your needs and goals are, make a list of what you would be eating per month (you can do it by week if that’s easier). Make it as detailed as possible, based on your favorite dishes and even the last month’s worth of groceries. For example, you could write down something like:
12 onions
1 box baby greens
5 carrots
8 potatoes
2 bunches greens (kale, swiss chard, etc)
1 head cabbage
4 tomatoes
1 head broccoli
2 cucumbers
…and so on.
Multiply that by 12 months, and you’ll get what you want until next growing season (unless you live in a year-round growing climate).
So now your list will look like:
144 onions
12 boxes baby greens
60 carrots
96 potatoes
24 bunches greens
12 heads of cabbage
48 tomatoes
12 heads of broccoli
24 cucumbers
Of course, the more variety you have, the less you’ll have to grow for each type - this is just an example to show you how to calculate. If you want to grow enough to just have a salad or two per week, that would be a different list!
2. How much space do I have?
Now that we came up with roughly what you want to harvest, let’s think of all the spaces you can use to grow!
Do you have a front, side or backyard? A lanai (patio or balcony)? A courtyard? Front steps? A sunny window to place window boxes? A wall garden? A greenhouse? A rooftop? A plot at the community garden in your town? A friend or neighbor who’s not using their yard at all and wouldn’t mind you using it in return for some veggies? Make a list of all the spaces you have available to you!
Now let’s look at what the average yield would be for each vegetable or fruit you want to grow. Here’s a list of some of the most common items you may want to grow and their respective yields.
Also remember that you don’t have to plant everything all at once. In a typical growing season, you can do succession planting and based on how quickly the plants mature, you can harvest and plant something else in its place.
From here, you can figure out whether you have enough room for everything you’re trying to grow.
3. What’s my budget?
Now let’s figure out how much it’s going to cost to acquire the seeds/seedlings, soil, and other material. You won’t have the full picture yet, but
If you’re wanting your harvest to last all year and you’re living in a place with cold winters, you’ll have to think about different ways to preserve food through canning, fermenting, drying, etc. Learn More
