Plan Your Garden From What You Cook
Turn the dishes you make into crop amounts, plant counts, and bed space. A worked salsa example, the yield numbers behind it, and where the estimates can...
Published by ThriveThyme
planning winter plate to plot recipes
Plan Your Garden From What You Cook
Winter is planning season. Before you order seeds, write down what you actually cook from the garden and how often. That list tells you what to grow better than any seed catalog.
The Four Steps
- List dishes and how often. Weekly in season, every 2 weeks, monthly, or a number of canning or freezing batches.
- Add up each crop. Multiply each garden ingredient by how many times you make the dish. Scale fresh dishes to your household.
- Divide by yield per plant. Use extension yield numbers, and add about 15 percent for losses.
- Convert plants to space. Use spacing to get square feet, then fit that into your beds.
Worked Example: Salsa for a Family of 4
Fresh salsa: 1.5 lb tomatoes, 1 onion, 2 jalapenos, and 1/2 cup cilantro make about 6 servings. A family of 4 eating it weekly for 12 summer weeks uses two thirds of a batch each week.
| Crop | Needed with 15 percent extra | Yield per plant | Plants |
|---|---|---|---|
| Slicing tomato | 13.8 lb | About 8 lb | 2 |
| Onion | 4.6 lb | About 1/3 lb | 14 |
| Jalapeno | 0.6 lb | About 1.25 lb | 1 |
| Cilantro | 0.3 lb | About 0.2 lb | 2, sown every 3 weeks |
Add 3 batches of canned salsa (6 pints each) and you need about 21 lb of paste tomatoes, or 3 more plants.
Where the Numbers Come From
Yields per 10 feet of row come from Kansas State University MF315 and the University of Maine planting chart, converted to per plant using recommended spacing. Herb yields and a few others are ThriveThyme estimates, and the tool says so next to each crop. Tomatoes, for example, use about 8 lb per plant, but a good year can give 12 and a wet, diseased year 5.
Where Estimates Miss
- Weather and disease. Plant ranges in the tool show what happens at high and low yields.
- Timing. Fresh crops come in waves. Two zucchini plants in August is a lot; in October it is none. Succession sow lettuce, cilantro, and beans.
- Storage. Onions, garlic, winter squash, potatoes, and sweet potatoes keep for months if cured. See the Harvest Storage Desk.
Try It
Open Plate to Plot, pick your dishes, and save the plan in your browser. It shows planting dates for your zone and a Seeds Now link for each crop. Good starting points are fresh salsa, basil pesto, and dill pickles.