Zone 11, where? Soil type and condition?

In a frost-free zone, which you have, then sufficiency revolves around using and encouraging perennial food crops. Many of the crops on your list are perennial in their region of origin. Others, like brassicas, can be quasi-perennial.

Not on your list, but should be:

pigeon pea (very key in a frost-free zone)

runner bean (if summer is not extremely humid, IOW, not S.Fla)

velvet bean (as a non-food cover crop for the hot season)

fava bean (for the cool season)

malabar spinach and other tropical greens

Ok, so that is an arid or semi-arid climate, I think? And so probably a minerally-rich soil but very low in OM of course.

So you should research arid-climate crops. I think chick-pea is certainly one important staple. Of course wheat and it's analogs should do very well. Cucumbers and melons should do well with careful management.

In any situation one of the keys to sustainability is appropriate legume crop rotation.

Ok thanks

You can not grow enough vegetables for a family in such a small plot. You will have to make choices. You can find on the web many places where the yield per row or per square foot is given. You should then compare it with the cost of buying to maximize your "profit". My guess: forget squash and melons, they take too much space for the small crop.

Probably your very best bets are cabbage in winter and sweet potatoes in summer, and perhaps chard for a continuous green. If you can go vertical on the North side, pole beans in mid-season will give you a lot and prefer sandy soil, runner beans are less productive IME. Other good producers: eggplant and okra in summer, tomatoes, cucumbers and zucchini in mid-season, and onions and potatoes in winter.

Okra would do well there. It really, really loves the heat, the hotter the better. Right now my okra isn't doing much, it wasn't doing much around this same temp last year.. But once the summer kicked up and triple digits kicked in, and everything else was suffering and dying, the okra was thriving. It just took off once the heat hit. It's also very productive, or was for me anyways. By far the most productive thing I've grown yet.

Are you a transplant to Karachi? Your list seems to be typical american choices of vegetables, and I am wondering what is grown there traditionally. Not that traditional veggies are all that will grow there, but those are likely the ones that are easiest. And it would give some idea for us to make comparisons to. I'm thinking lentils might also be on the list.

Karachi I think they have a forum on here "four seasons gardening", about growing food year round.. Like mentioned, research is key... You could also see what a farmer, or even neighbor does in your area... Either way I would diffenently get a good foraging book just in case your garden doesn't produce like you expected.. It's a real downer when your counting on that apple tree producing to realize you will not have food for that month... Alot of wild greens cook up like spinach, some even prefer them... You can't go wrong having a backup - grab a good foraging book for your area, rather be safe than sorry. Even talk to a herbalist/botanist around you, they might be able to shoot you in the right direction. Go see what others growers are doing in your area... Always have a backup.. I think it's great what your doing...

Best of luck,
Joe

Also look at verticle gardening and square foot gardening.

I have a tiny space and grow enough for myself for most of the year.

Spinach and snow peas over winter and are my earliest plants-you would plant something like that for the coolest season harvest-snow peas can be planted along a fence line or the very edge of the garden on some type of trellis which you can use later for other things.
Use stackable or hanging planters to increase yeild per square foot of small plants.
Grow some crops with good shelf life such as potatos, yams or onions and things that preserve well.
You may not get 100% of what you need but you can get a lot.

I find myself quibbling about the term 'self sufficient'. It sounds like your goal is not to totally avoid using the store, but instead to minimize your store-spent dollars. Those sound like similar goals, they're not necessarily identical.

For example, potatoes are pretty easy to grow, and they produce a lot of calories per square foot. So from a self-sufficiency point of view, they might be a logical thing to grow. But potatoes are pretty cheap (where I live, at least), so from a dollar-saving point of view, the low cost of potatoes might make them an illogical choice. But potatoes are often grown with a lot of herbicides, and organic potatoes aren't as cheap, so that might again make them a logical crop to grow. (By the way, potatoes prefer a cool climate; it would be worth checking whether sweet potatoes or another warm-weather crop might be better.)

If I were analyzing this for my area, with prices in my area, some of my thoughts would be:

Root crops like onions, potatoes, etc., are pretty cheap and also keep pretty well. So instead of growing them, I might instead watch for good prices and arrange my home to support storing a substantial quantity when I do get a good price. Carrots are similar, though they'd be harder to store because they'd need to be in the fridge. (Then again, in your warm climate maybe all of these would need to be in the fridge.)

On the other hand, fresh onions like green onions and scallions and chives are more expensive, don't keep well, and take up limited space. So they're probably worth growing.

Leaf crops are expensive and easy to grow. So while they don't produce a lot of calories per square foot, they might save a lot of dollars per square foot. Also, they transplant easily, so you can maximize the use of your space by growing big stocky seedlings in a small amount of garden space and transplanting them into larger spaces only when they're at a good size. The same is true of the onions to some extent - rather than planting seeds at the final spacing, you'd definitely want to grow onions to a good stocky size before putting them in at the final spacing.

In my area, herbs are particularly expensive, so they would absolutely save a lot of dollars per square foot, assuming that you're going to use them anyway. In many climates you can't have fresh basil and mint all year round, but you could research various ways of preserving them.

Tomatoes are wildly productive in season, and there are lots of ways of preserving them. On the other hand, they might be pretty cheap in season, so I would evaluate growing and preserving my own in season, against buying them in season and preserving those purchased tomatoes.

You also might want to change your diet a little to reflect what the garden is most suitable for. For example, I find spinach to be fairly finicky and space-inefficient, so I'd substitute with lettuce for salads and kale for cooked greens. That may just not be an option - you may absolutely want spinach and nothing else - but it's an example. As another example, cauliflower is finicky; kohlrabi is less so. Melons don't produce a lot of food per square foot; other fruits might work better.

And so on. And so on. I'd suggest looking for books on intensive gardening for ways to maximize food production in a small space.

This post was edited by chickenfreak on Sat, Mar 23, 13 at 19:36

Although legumes require a lot of space to get a significant harvest, the main reason for even a small gardener to not leave them out is that doing so will likely mean eventually having your favored crops eliminated by disease and insects.

In pakistan certainly lentils are well suited, as well as mung and many other grams native or adapted to the northern part of the subcontinent.

Kale in Pakistan? oh boy. But I don't see why no legumes, no crops. The OP clearly specified that they add manure.

I say that based on my experience which is that a lack of legumes in the rotation over a period of years ends up in systemic diseases, regardless of manure inputs. Maybe that isn't so in a sufficiently mineralized soil.

Small gardens are made most productive by having a continuous supply of replacement plants. Use the current space for the plants to be swapped in and out, like greens, and brassicas..(Even chard, which is a wonder green that I have never had bolt, will fall prey to aphids as the plant gets older and weaker. )

Sprawling, or running plants could go into hills outside of the main garden.

Grow your perennial herbs in pots. Basil can be grown indoors in the winter, if you have a sunny spot. Chard, also does fine in pots.

Do you have any places for hanging plants? If so, there are smaller varieties of tomatoes and cukes that willl do well in baskets, as will mints and stawberries,providing your potting mix has a moisture holding element like coir, and of course, as long as they do not get full sun in the summer.

Think about microclimates in general, and how to take advantage of them.. My greens are in earthboxes in the shade of a mesquite tree. If you have access to materials to build similar self watering containers you will be pleased with the results. (Search GW for earthtainer, or look for"global buckets" on the web)

Row covers will give you a few degrees more heat in the winter and critical shade in the summer. A row cover, by the way can be any translucent light weight material.

4" of mulch will keep roots cool, preserve moisture, suppress weeds and feed the soil.

Moving pots near an earthmass like a house or a wall will add a few weeks to their spring an fall seasons.

And, of course, you will need to plant flowers for pollinating and benefical insects. I grow mostly parthenocarpic cucurbits now, hybrids that are self fertile, but if you don't you will definitately need to bring in some pollinators. My watermelons were overlooked last year, until I hung a humming bird feeder in the middle of the patch.

And finally, try to figure out what your optimum growing seasons are. For growing in your kind of summer, think African...sweet potatoes, okra, etc.As a general principle, fruiting veggies produce best with night time temperatures above 50 and daytimes less than 90, but, again, you can help them along with shade and mulch.

Good luck,
Jan

You've never had chard bolt? Within the first season, some varieties are more "bolty" than others, and after the first winter I've never had one not bolt.

There is actually a Pakistani gardening forum that may be of use to you...

Here is a link that might be useful: Gardening Pakistan

PN Brown...re chard:

Do you plant it in large quantities? I have just enough that I can keep it picked back and, then, too, by growing it in pots I am able to move it to ever shadier spots.

Jan

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Karachi

I thought it was like San Diego, but really, there is no comparison to any US locale, including Florida. 177 inches of rain go along with a semi-arid climate definition, since most of it falls during the monsoon. But in January the average low is 57F, and temperatures above 100 happen 8 months of the year.

It seems to me that tomatoes are winter vegetables there, and winter is the busiest growing season according to the list of the OP, which includes arugula, carrots, potatoes and onions. The problem there is probably growing anything in July-August, which averages 90F and 2.2 inches of rain a day. Tomatoes definitely do not like that.

Wow Glib. Thanks. Well, K-gardener, that's a whole 'nother set of gardening challenges. You get more rain in three days than we do in a good year! I think I'd forget about mulching...

jan

Hi guys thanks for the follow ups!!!!!
My Internet has been down and I have not even able to look at the post.
All the things I named are pretty much traditional crops and there are many more things which are also locally grown. My goal is not to become completely self sufficient as in not buy anything for the kitchen, but I do want to minimise my buying expenses. I know what all can grow in winters here, but I would like to know what all is worth a try in summer. Also, we barely experience rainfall. It only rains in the late monsoon season and sometimes in winters too, but not much.
I also wanted to ask which of the following fruit trees will be decently productive in containers.
Mango
Lemons
Oranges
Lychee
Mulberry
Chico
Curry
Grapefruit
Guava
Banana
Jackfruit
Date
Coconut
Custard apple
Papaya
Pomegranate
These trees are very cheap in local nurseries and it is very easy for me to obtain them, but unfortunately I have no more space in the garden for any tree and I really want to try growing them.

I don't think many of us here have experience with tropical tree crops. I have attempted to grow some of those on the list in north florida with not good results other than citrus.

Such a different set of challenges! I don't know what varieties of trees you can choose from ,but a friend had a dwarf date tree (at least I assumed it was a dwarf) that did well for her for years. It was in a really sunny spot in her house. So other kinds might do well too. Maybe ask at the nursery?
I would also stick with heavy mulch if you can to keep the soil from drying too fast.