The Modern Victory Garden

Various crops that you may grow in your Modern Victory Garden will provide different yields per area of bed space occupied.   If you follow the food pyramid guidelines and serving sizes, then you would need to produce approximately 460 pounds of vegetables and 365 pounds of fruit per person per year to be self sufficient for these two food items.  While that may be out of reach for many people to achieve in their food production gardens, optimizing the available growing area to produce more of your own food supply is a reasonable and worthy goal for everyone.   To do that effectively, it is important to consider production capability of the crops you select to occupy your limited and valuable growing bed areas.   The following is a compilation of approximate yield information for a variety of crops based on a number of assumptions.   Specifically, non-hybrid plant varieties in ordinary soil, with sufficient water, are assumed.   Actual yields will invariably be different based on the varieties grown, the climate, and growing conditions.   This approximate yield information can be useful for planning purposes and highlights which crops provide the greatest production for bed area occupied.  This data was gathered from a variety of sources but the largest portion of it came from the books "Mini Farming for Self Sufficiency" by Brett Markham and John Jeavon's "How to Grow More Vegetables".