Unfortunately, that's a question that's impossible for anyone except yourself to answer. It depends on how much of a certain vegetable you and your family like to eat. So just plant. Then decide if you want/need more or less of something and plan accordingly next year.

The pests you'll have to watch for the most with the broccoli, cauliflower, brussels sprouts, kale, collards, mustards, and turnips (all of these are brassicas) are aphids and cabbage worms and/or loopers. There's a ton of info on controlling them if you search this forum.

And in my experience, you need A LOT of spinach plants to get a decent sized harvest.

Rodney

I totally agree with Rodney -- you'll only learn from trial and error. I keep a notebook and write down info on each crop and whether I need more or less than I planted on the previous year.

It will also depend on your soil and growing conditions. For example, most people seem to plant lots of tomato plants, but my tomatoes become little jungles and I get plenty to use, can and freeze from 5 plants. I don't want any more tomatoes than that!

It will also depend on your success levels (as in, how much of the crop do those cabbage worms eat?) and the type of, say, broccoli you plant (some make loads of side shoots that continue past the cutting of the main head).

Also depends on whether you like the frozen product you end up with. I used to plant 18 broccoli plants and freeze a lot. Now I'm better at keeping fresh savoy cabbage growing during the winter, which we like much better than frozen broccoli and has similar flavor, so I only plant 6 broccoli and eat most of it fresh.

Maybe a good starting point would be 6 of each of the brassicas and a 2 foot by 3 foot patch of each spinach and lettuce.

So yes, just plant, and keep notes, and enjoy discussing with your family if they would have wanted more (or less) of something.

Yep, one of those questions answered by personal experience only. No one else has anyway of knowing how much of what your family will eat, how much you would want to freeze, etc.

Some think only 4 tomato plants is enough, I'd never plant less than 25-30 for a family of 4. For just the wife and me I always plant at least 6 cuke plants as we make lots of pickles. Same for summer squash - some say only 1 plant (I never plant only 1 of anything) but I always plant at least 3 hills of 3 plants each for just the two of us.

Broccoli with enough to freeze for winter - at least 10 plants as i head is a meal for 4 people.. Same for cauliflower.

Leafy greens - as much as you have space for.

Brussel Sprouts (we love 'em) - at least 6-8 plants.

Dave

Heh Dave, your post reminded me: I grow 5-6 tomato plants. We love tomatoes, give away many, make sauce, freeze them for soup, the whole 9 yards. My coworker grows 25-30 tomato plants. He hates tomatoes. Plants them just because he likes the plants. Gives them all away.

Go figure, LOL

OSU Garden Planting Guide. We might eat more or less than your area. Adjust accordingly.

Here is a link that might be useful: OSU Garden Planting Guide

I have a link that might help. But I too agree with others. It really depends on your needs and preferences. For me, I want as many tomatoes as I can get because we love spaghetti at my house :). Peppers too.

Here is a link that might be useful: Well Fed Homestead

In my case, I think that good health needs one lb of greens per person per day. That translates to about 1100 lbs of greens over the year.

I can offer a technique I use to estimate how many of everything you need. In winter, pretend you building you family menu for a summer month. List down dishes and ingredients. Do not forget fresh eaten produce. Also keep in mind, when certain crop is available(Google!). Now you can approximately estimate how mush of produce you need. Now, time to Google again, to check how much of produce you can get from the plant/square foot.(If you inexperienced gardener divide by two!). Now you can calculate your number of plants/sq. footage. Things to keep in mind:
1) Not all plants can produce whole season long, even if they continue to live. Lettuce, for example, bolts and get bitter, so planting it all at once is not good idea. Same with broccoli - once I planted 12 of them in the same time. And had to freeze 2/3 of it - it was about to turn to flowers, but I couldn't make myself eat more broccoli)
2) When you start picking your produce plants are still small. As they grow, they give you more produce from one plant. Turnips, for example. I start picking them, when they less then golf ball size. Now I am eating baseball size turnips. If in May I needed 3-5 of them at once per person, now one is too much.
3) I agree with responses above - experience is everything. But you can cheat it a little bit if you start really thinking about the topic. Sometimes you need to start using your fine mathematician skills to calculate something. (How many garlic bulb do I need to plant, to produce my garlic for a year and also my own seed garlic for fall planting to to produce my garlic for a next year and also my own seed garlic.?..and so on))) )

Good luck to you!

thanks everyone for the response.... I know no one can tell me how much our family will eat I guess I should have reworded my question and asked "how much do you plant" that way I can have other peoples responses to compare to where I need to start. Because I'm clueless as to if broccoli keeps producing after the head is picked and others too. I only have 3 small areas to plant so if one type of plant takes up a lot of room but produces little I wouldn't want to plant it. Again CLUELESS! LOL But for those of you that took the time to help me thank you so much!!

For a family of three, I plant 50 chard, 60 collards, one bed of lettuce (4X12), one of chicory, two of radicchio, two beds of arugula, some combination of komatsuna and lacinato (probably 60 plants), and about 30 cabbage. We do buy some greens and sprout sprouts in late winter, and we also eat beet greens and dandelion and purslane (weeds).

Because I'm clueless as to if broccoli keeps producing after the head is picked and others too.

For all practical purposes, no. Some small side shoots may develop after the head is harvested but it depends on the variety and the weather and they are bite size only. All the rest on your list - no. If you only have 3 small areas to plant then I'd sure remove some things from your list above. Pick the 3 (maybe 4 ) favorites from the list and focus on them.

Dave

PS: I plant about the same as glib because we make a lot of kraut and can collards, turnips, spinach, and mustard greens and dehydrate and freeze kale, Depends on how much canning you want to do.

Ok so I'm taking broccoli off the list for sure, and I'm sure cabbage is the same way Only one head? so I'll take that off the list. I'm dying to try the brussel sprouts though have yall grown them before? this summer I planted bush snap beans and the bugs have eaten them alive! But all my other veggies never had a big problem with bugs thank the good lord. I don't think I've seen one bug on my squash!! How are the greens with bug issues?

Well, I'm on the West coast, so I can garden pretty much all year long.
But for fall/winter I like chard and kale. Both are very hardy.
Spinach seems to take so much to get a meal, I stick to the chard. It keeps coming back!
Lettuces, radish, snow peas.... once planted, asparagus is an early spring thing (the start of garden season!)
I don't go for peas, cause you have to plant SO many for just a couple of meals! Brussel sprouts grew great the first year, til I went out in the garden with my glasses ON and found that they were so infested with aphids they were beyond just spraying them down! (I wear my glasses in the garden now! LOL)
You mentioned forgetting about the broc, cauliflower and single harvest veges. IMHO, I usually grow some just to have them, but don't count on them for my winter veges. Just from time to time. If you're together enough (which I am NOT!) to plant a few seeds each week to space out the timing....MAYBE, but ,as you said you only have a small area to plant in!
You might want to just concentrate on things you can can/preserve/freeze with your small area, or think about getting some more space in a community garden to expand. I have over an acre, but my garden consists of 4 4x8s, 2 3x6s, 2 3x3sin ground raised beds, and a couple of new raised up 3x8x1s.
Contact your county extension office (or go online) to find a planting guide! You can also check out the Harvest forum to get some ideas on what to do with your veges!
Personally, I use a FOODSAVER which is a vaccum sealer system!
And I go on! Nancy

Straight from the pages of 'Rodales Garden Answers' book....

Broccoli: Fresh eating: 5 to 10 plants per person
(One plant can produce 2lbs. of main heads & sideshoots)

Brussels Sprouts: For fresh eating, plant 5 to 10 plants per person

Cauliflower: Grow 5 plants per person, twice that for winter preservation.

Collards: Grow 3 to 5 plants per person

Kale: 2 to 5 plants per person.

Mustard Greens: Not listed

Spinach: 10 plants per person per planting.

Turnips: A few feet of row per person per planting.

Here is a link that might be useful: Rodales garden Answers Book @ Amazon

This post was edited by MsMorningSong on Sat, Jul 12, 14 at 10:31