I've found that no two players approach it the same way.
What I do personally is create 2x2 farm plots. I start with a single 2x2 aboveground plot, and four 2x2 underground plots. In the aboveground plot, I plant whatever aboveground seeds I have available for brewing a variety of booze (different every season). I often have prickle berries, so those are usually in the rotation. Wild strawberries seem fairly common as well.
Underground, I start out with just a couple plots (and even that's overkill for just the starting 7 dwarves). I make full use of the textile industry, so I generally plant a mix of crops for cloth-making (pig tails), cloth-dyeing (dimple cup -- or later, aboveground dyes), food (plump helmet, cave wheat, quarry bushes, sweet pods), and booze (plump helmet, cave wheat, extra pig tails).
I turn off all cooking of plants.
I turn off brewing of sweet pods, and sometimes of cave wheat and pig tails, depending on how productive my farms have been.
Once the workshops are in place, I'll generally set the farmer's workshop on repeat processing the pig tails into thread, processing the sweet pods into syrup (requires barrels), and processing the quarry bushes into leaves (requires bags). Then I'll set the quern on repeat to mill the cave wheat and the dye. Unfortunately, they'll also mill the sweet pods, which I'd rather they not do, but I'm too lazy to set up separate sweet pod storage and processing facilities. And besides, I overproduce so much food that it's never a serious issue.
After some immigrants have started coming in, I'll bring the other two underground plots online, which give me five 2x2 plots total. That, plus gathering of wild plants, plus any meat brought in by killing animals, plus self-produced cheese, plus plants and meat and milk and cheese from caravans, is generally enough for some 50 dwarves. (I rarely even bother with eggs.) When the population climbs above that, I'll make another couple plots (always 2x2) if needed.