The vege gardens in

Just a few notes I have gleened from a couple of magazines:

You need about 10 sqm of garden bed to grow all the annual crops for 1 person. More space is needed for the perennial crops e.g. rhubarb, asparagus, scarlet runner beans. For a family of 4-5 that works out at about 40-60sqm of planted beds. Double that to allow for paths, storage, idle ground etc.

Every 10 sqm of garden requires about 1 hour per week to keep well tended.

Vegetables in general require 6 hours of sunlight per day.

Avoid planting your garden close to trees and shubs as they will shade it and compete for nutrients and water (found that out the hard way).

To work out how much and what to plant:

Write a list of all the things that you eat that can be grown in a garden. You can include things that you normally buy tinned or frozen but exclude anything that you know won't grow in your climate. (A)

Work out you annual consumption e.g. if you buy 1.5kg of carrots a week that works out at 78kg a year, one lettuce a week for half the year equals 26(B)

Some rules of thumb are:

2.5kg of tomatoes produce 1 litre of tomato sauce
It takes 10 rocket or similar salad greens to fill a supermarket bag of mesclun.
Tinned vegetables are about 50% water so 10 x 400g of kidney beans equates 2kg of fresh home grown.
Dried vegetables are 90% lighter than fresh so 60g fresh chilles will dry to 6g of chilli powder.

Work out the amount you need to havest (C) Note: this may be the same as (B)

Work out the yeild per plant i.e average carrot weights 75g, an onion =150g etc one courgette plant will keep one person in courgettes until they are sick of them. Use your own experience.(D)
Allow for some attrition for seeds that don't come up, slugs and snails etc e.g. 5% for mesclun 20% for lettuces. (E)
plug you numbers into the following formula

C/D + (C/D x E ) = number of plants required (in theory anyway)

The back of the seed packet or punnet label will tell you how much space each plant needs.