Wondering how many greens you should grow? This quick video explains how to calculate the number of plants you will need to meet your needs.

One of the most challenging tasks for many gardeners is figuring out how many plants to grow to meet their needs. If you don’t enjoy math, this can be a little tricky, but it can be done, as the video below explains.

What you will need to do is figure out how much of a certain crop (in this case greens) you generally eat per day. Then multiply that by however many plants you would need in your garden to supply that amount of food per week.

While the video in particular addresses leafy greens, you can also apply this to other veggies, such as tomatoes, peppers, broccoli, etc.

If you are in an area where you have a short growing season, you will want to calculate how much you can grow during that season in order to preserve enough to last you through the non-growing months.  For example, if you estimate that you eat about 1 quart of tomato sauce per week, and your ripe tomato season is about 8 weeks long, you will need to can or freeze about 44 quarts of tomatoes to last you the rest of the year. So you will need to calculate how many tomatoes (approximately) you get from each plant, and multiply that by the number of tomato plants you need to grow to get enough to meet your needs.

For greens, as described in the video below, you will want to estimate how many leaves you eat per day (or week), and then use that to figure out how many greens to grow.

Clear as mud? Here’s how it works: