The short answer is that you need 1/4-acre garden to feed a family. That said, there is a lot more than just having the right-sized space. If you’re going to try and use the garden to feed your family, then you will need several systems in place to keep that food source going.
Much of your success in creating a garden to feed your family comes down to the foods you choose to grow. While you might assume that it is all about high-calorie foods, it is also about balancing high-calorie and high-producing plants.
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Here are some of the highest-calorie foods you can grow.
- Beans
- Corn
- Fall & Winter Squash
- Potatoes
- Sunflower Seeds
- Sweet Potatoes
- Turnips
Beyond high-calorie foods, you also want to grow foods that produce, produce, produce. Things like tomatoes, green beans, eggplant, peppers, herbs, zucchini, and summer squash are all going to produce over and over from one seed.
Growing this way will maximize what you can yield from your growing area. This is how you feed a family using a small garden.
Things You Will Need to Build
If you are going to have an effective garden for feeding your family, then you will need to build some gardening infrastructure.
Raised Beds
The raised bed does a number of things for the home gardener. Taking your crops off the ground level can protect them from things like floods and pests. Raised beds also give you the ability to create the soil from scratch that your plants will grow in.
The soil on your 1/4-acre plot might not be great. It could lack nutrients or have other issues. A raised bed can be filled with high quality nutrient dense soil to grow in.
You can also cover the raised bed easily in the winter using PVC and plastic sheeting. Should you choose to continue growing cold weather vegetables through the winter season?
Fencing
Most people underestimate the importance of fencing when it comes to raising food. Be it animals or plants, they all need protection. If you truly want to feed your family with the food, you grow then it is going to need protection.
A quality fence will not only keep your dogs and kids from trampling seedlings or destroying mature plants, but it can also slow or stop the predation from little nibblers like rabbits.
Composting Bin
Having a place with at least one stall, up to three, is great for keeping your garden topped off with compost. If you have more than one stall in your bin, then you can really let the compost cook in one stall while you are collecting scraps and yard waste in the other stall.
Compost adds so much to your soil and if you plan to sustainably garden for any duration then making your own compost is a must. This compost will be added to your growing beds at the beginning and likely the end of each year to amend and fortify your soil.
Trellises
To take advantage of your small space you will want to “grow up” meaning use vining plants like English peas, squashes, pole beans, and plants that like to climb up rather than outwards. Building trellises is easy and is just cross-hatching wood so the plants have something to get a hold of.
Trellises can be staked into the ground near climbing and vining plants. Tomato cages are a great option, too. Tomato plants can be grown very tall and produce insane amounts of tomatoes.
Rain Barrels
One of the most overlooked aspects of gardening is watering a large garden. Each year farmers buy and fight over water rights to ensure they can water their crops. In short, you need access to lots.
Whether it’s a dry hot summer and your well is running dry, or if your tap water line has been shut off because of a disaster, your plants still need water. Rain barrels are a great water catchment solution for watering plants.
Coop?
Are you considering any livestock in or around your self-sufficient garden? Building things like duck boxes, chicken coops, and rabbit pens will allow you to produce meat and eggs!
The manure from these animals is packed with nitrogen and can be another way to feed your plants. Poultry manure needs to be composted first, or added to your cooking compost piles, but rabbit manure can go right into the garden!
Adding Perennials
Along with your high-yield and high-calorie crops, your self-sufficient garden needs to also have perennial food-producing plants. Perennial food-producing plants are simply plants that come back year after year without you having to plant seeds.
These are food sources that you think about and work for much less. This is why they are such great options for your garden.
LIST OF PERENNIAL FOOD-PRODUCING PLANTS TO CONSIDER:
- Asparagus
- Blackberries
- Echinacea
- Elderberry
- Gooseberries
- Hardy Kiwi
- Horseradish
- Jerusalem Artichoke
- Lavender
- Raspberries
- Rosemary
- Strawberries
- Oregano
- Walking Onion
- Watercress
Feeding Your Crops
A self-sustaining garden is going to require a method of feeding your plants that is also repeatable. You can use yard waste, fallen leaves, and food scraps to create a nutrient-dense compost that will feed your plants.
You can also immerse your compost in a 5-gallon bucket overnight and create a powerful compost tea that can be applied to your plant’s leaves and roots.
Preserving Your Harvest
To feed your family even after the growing season, you will need to preserve some of your harvest. Around the end of the summer most people who garden consistently are running out of windowsill space for things like tomatoes, they cannot imagine eating another summer squash, and even the neighbors are running out of ways to use the excess you share with them.
The overflow from the garden is perfect for preservation. This is how to take that great harvest and store it away for the winter when your garden is either dormant or has changed significantly.
Here are the best preservation methods for your harvest.
- Canning
- Dehydrating
- Freeze Drying
- Sun Drying
Saving Seeds
One of the most important steps you can take is saving seeds for next year’s garden. If you are truly considering a self-sufficient garden capable of feeding your family year after year, then you must become excellent at saving seeds from your last garden.
I like to use fishing tackle boxes with many compartments to keep all my seeds in one place and easily label them. Each compartment can hold a bunch of small seeds, these tackle boxes are already watertight and easy to carry.
These seeds are the key to next year’s garden. This is why it’s so important that you start with high-quality heirloom plants so you know that next year’s garden will germinate well and feed your family for another growing season.
Should You Grow Through the Cold Months?
This is a personal decision and one that has some PROS and CONS. I would highly recommend a fall garden. I think some of the fall crops are invaluable for their nutritional value and calories. Things like pumpkins and fall squash are serious producers and are also easy to can and preserve.
However, even a well-nurtured winter garden grows slowly. Not to mention it pulls nutrients from your garden at a time when it could be covered with compost, a tarp, and given time to recover.
The greenhouse is another option for growing in colder climates. They can be an investment, but it might make sense if you are going to depend on grown food to feed your family.
A more affordable option is the in-ground greenhouse. In this design, the walls of the greenhouse are built in a hole in the ground. The top is covered by plastic sheeting or transparent glass or plastic panels.
Another thing you could do is invest in a grow light and start growing food indoors. UV grow lights come in a variety of sizes giving potted plants or indoor hydroponics all the light they need to grow healthy and produce food.
Conclusion
It’s intimidating to make a wild claim like, “I am going to feed my family from my own garden.” Your insecurity comes from the possibility of failure from taking on such a HUGE goal. No one likes to fail but there is a good chance it could take a couple of years of failure to achieve your final goal.
If you step onto the battlefield well informed that will make all the difference. Also, if you address things like water, soil, and sunlight, in the early stages then, eventually, you will find success.
Do not skimp on protecting the garden with fencing. It’s one thing to have struggles with soil PH or pest issues. However, nothing hurts, quite like investing your time in a successful garden and having our chickens or dogs demolish it in a single afternoon!
I want you to know that this is very possible. Not to mention, even if you don’t meet 100% of your family’s needs, you’re doing one hell of a job growing a large percentage of your own food!
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