I am of the opinion that we, in the United States of America, have become rather spoiled over the last 3/4 of a century with the availability of a wide variety of fresh fruits and vegetables in our local grocery stores, markets, and super stores. While this vast array of fresh produce is a wonderful boon to our health, it has not always been thus, and may not always be so. Additionally, there are many who want to grow as much of their own produce as they can, myself included, but guidance on quantities of vegetables to plant for a person is somewhat rare in books today. Also, I felt that as I read some of the new books, there was still more reliance on the local grocery store to fill in the gaps than I wanted. Thus, I went looking in a variety of OLD, out of print, books for recommendations on how many vegetables to plant to feed a person for a year. The books I chose to read were from the late 1800’s to the 1940’s, back when many families in the US relied upon the food they grew every year to feed their family for the coming year.

Here is a compilation of the recommendations I found. Bare in mind that these recommendations do not really take into account local growing seasons (artichokes here must be grown in a greenhouse or walapini!) or other climate factors (asparagus in the desert? Only if you live on a river, which I don’t.). Nor do they take into account individual preferences, teenage boys versus teenage girls versus two-year olds, or allergy potential so, take these recommendations as a ROUGH starting point and modify them to suit your situation. If I could grow asparagus, I’d probably plant about 10 times this amount.

Artichokes
1-4 plants per person

Asparagus
12-15 plants per person

Beans, Bush
15-20 plants per person

Beans, Lima
8-10 plants per person

Beans, Pole
15-20 plants per person

Beets
10-20 plants per person

Broccoli
6-12 plants per person

Brussels Sprouts
2-8 plants per person

Cabbage
4-8 plants per person

Carrots
15-60 plants per person

Cauliflower
3-5 plants per person

Celeriac
1-5 plants per person

Celery
4-8 plants per person

Corn
15-50 plants per person

Cucumbers
3-5 plants per person

Eggplant
1-2 plants per person, plus 2-3 extra per family

Kale
1 5’ row per person

Leaf Lettuce
8-10 plants per person

Melons
2-6 plants per person

Onions
40-80 plants per person

Peas
25-60 plants per person

Peppers
6-8 plants per person

Potatoes
10-30 plants per person

Pumpkins, edible
1 plant per person

Rhubarb
1-3 crowns per person

Spinach
10-20 plants per person

Summer Squash
2-4 plants per person

Winter Squash
1-2 plants per person

Sweet Potatoes
5 plants per person

Swiss chard

8-15 plants per person

Tomatoes
2-5 plants per person