Garden Plan Consider How Much Produce You Want To Grow When Buying Seed Packets For Coming Season

Consider this in planning your next garden: A standard 20-foot-square plot will supply a family of four with fresh produce from spring to fall.

But before you can calculate the harvest from a well-managed garden, you must figure out how much seed you need to start it.

Seed companies routinely package far more seeds in an envelope than a single backyard gardener can use in a season.

This is not the case for some plants: There are rarely too many large-seeded varieties such as peas, corn and beans in a packet. But on average, far more of a given variety are provided than can be used efficiently.

This is because the packaging costs about as much as the seed inside. Whether a packet contains 30 seeds or 300, its retail cost will be about the same: $1 to $3, depending on the seed.

Our model 400-square-foot plot might be laid out very traditionally, in straight, narrow rows, or in the more-modern style of “wide” rows, each 2 to 3 feet across. Alternatively, it might be a series of raised beds, each perhaps 2 or 3 feet wide and 4 to 6 feet long, separated by paths.

Although the garden’s style has some influence on how much seed will be needed, the real factor to consider is the amount of produce one wants throughout the season. The more intensely a garden is planted, the greater the commitment.

With that as the criterion, here are some suggested seed amounts for our model plot to yield a continuous harvest from spring until fall. The amounts are based on the standard seed packet available at retail outlets or the smallest packet from mail-order companies.

Some plants won’t be sown until the summer garden is started in May and the autumn garden is started in August. Still, now is the time to line up all the growing season’s seeds.

Beans: Two to four seed packets. Fresh string beans are one of the great joys of the summer garden, and new hybrids aren’t stringy at all. They can be sown every three weeks starting in late April or early May. The adventurous gardener can sow them as soon as late February if they are started in a sheltered spot and covered after they sprout with cloches or garden fabric. A cold frame would be ideal. Unused bean seeds will stay viable for two to three years.

Carrots: Two seed packets. With any garden style, you’ll be sowing no more than half a packet at one time. The first sowing will be in April, followed by another in May, which will produce carrots through late July. Then you’ll sow two more batches, one in late August and the other in September, which will provide carrots until Thanksgiving. I always try two varieties.

Corn: One seed packet. Growing corn in a small garden is difficult but not impossible. You’ll need a block 4-feet square, and seeds are put into the ground at 1-foot intervals, so you actually need only 16 seeds for each batch of corn you grow. A small seed packet will contain double that amount, but corn seed will keep for a year.

Cucumbers: Buy one or two seed packets but only as insurance. Purchase three plants in May, and they will produce plenty of cucumbers through September. However, if they succumb to wilt by the end of July, as they sometimes do, you have the seeds to sow a new crop in late August, when finding started plants is almost impossible.

Lettuce: Three to four packets. Sown in succession, lettuce will produce in the garden until year-end. Get different kinds. You’ll use about a third of a packet at a time, with the first sowing in March or April, the last in October.

Peas: Four packets - two varieties in the spring, two in the fall. Sow the first batch in March or April (no later than May 1); sow the fall crop in July.

Spinach: Two packets, one for sowing in March or April, the other for sowing in August or September.

Squash/zucchini: Two packets. Get different varieties to minimize disease and pest damage. You’ll use only a half-dozen seeds per sowing - three of each kind in May, three more of each kind in August. The remaining seeds will keep until next year.

Some vegetables are better started as plants. Buy seedlings of brassicas such as broccoli, cabbage, brussels sprouts and cauliflower from a store in April. You’ll need no more than six of each. Do this again in August. Don’t bother with seeds. Brassicas need resetting lower once seedlings grow 6 to 8 inches high. By buying them as started plants and setting them deeply to begin with, you avoid that chore.

Both eggplant and peppers should be purchased as started plants in May because they take so long to mature. If you want a rare variety of pepper, however, you must turn to the seed catalogs.

Buy tomatoes as plants because a single seed packet will contain 100 seeds, far too many for the average gardener. The 20-by-20-foot sample garden will have room for, at most, six tomato plants.

Tomatoes, too, should be started early indoors or under cover to get the most out of the summer yield. As with brassicas, they produce stronger stems if set deeper in the ground when young.

Of course, if you want a rarer or heirloom variety, you will need to buy seeds. It is tempting to get 15 varieties and then use only 3 percent of the seed, but sometimes that’s the only way to get what you want.