Do you wish you got more food from your garden? I don’t blame you.
Gardening is joyful work, but it’s work nevertheless.
It’s nice to feel that the hours and sweat you’re pouring into your garden are being rewarded with large, colorful and delicious harvests.
Getting more food from your garden is an attainable goal for sure. You just need to understand some of the different characteristics of the vegetables you grow, such as – which vegetables are high yield crops?
A few years ago my sister called me from Philadelphia, where she was learning how to garden, and asked me, “When you plant one onion how many onions do you get?”
Wow! This one question from a newbie gardener completely re-framed how I look at my garden. (My sister’s always good like that!)
I had never quite thought about each vegetable in this way. When you start to examine the garden in this light there are clearly things that are more “worth it” to grow than others.
When you plant a tomato you obviously get a lot of bang for your buck. You plant one seedling, wait three months, and then get to harvest pounds and pounds of tomatoes. That’s a pretty good investment for a $3 seedling.
Definitely a high-yield crop.
On the other hand, when you plant a cabbage seedling you wait 70 days and then harvest one cabbage. That’s it, no more, it’s over. If you want to get anything more out of that space you’ll have to rip out the remaining cabbage carcass and plant something else.
Not really a high-yield crop.
Hmmm, which one sounds like a better investment to you?
Well, from an objective standpoint, we’d both probably agree that a tomato plant will definitely provide you with more food per plant.
But, there are other factors besides just yield.
Whether you think tomatoes are a better choice than cabbage might depend on how much you love cabbage and hate tomatoes. Maybe you eat sauerkraut every day for lunch so you can’t wait to fill your garden with rows and rows of cabbage.
The answer to the question, “Is it worth it to grow?” all depends on your unique perspective.
That’s why it’s important to know a bit more about the harvest categories of vegetable, including which vegetables are high yield and which are low yield, so you can make a strategic decision based on YOUR cooking, grocery shopping and eating habits and what the people in your house like to eat.
Here’s what you need to know!