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[Cheddarius]

What is the most land-efficient method of farming (that is essentially self-sufficient, the only resource used being labor) and how much food (in terms of percentage of an average adult male's food consumption per unit of land) can one feasibly expect to gain from it?

[sonerohi]

I've got about 50 square feet that can grow enough cucumber, tomato, cantaloupe, lettuce, and onion for me to use for a whole year. There are two or three other things I plant that I can't recall, but it is a huge amount of my plant diet. If I grew corn, all I would have to buy is bread and meats, but I heard corn is harder to get right.

[Jude]

No idea.

I'd like to grow most of my own veggies one day but we'll see if I ever get around to it

[sonerohi]

Do it Jude. Do ittttt. It is actually really satisfying to bring in and freeze/preserve decently large tubs just filled with stuff you grew yourself. Also, the other things were potato and lettuce. But I'm allergic to lettuce and my brother uses the potatoes for redneck vodka.

[Cheddarius]

50 square feet, you say? Can you make do with even less if you maximize calories and grow corn, beans, etc.? How can you achieve a balanced diet like this?

[Osmosis Jones]

Throw in a chicken coop as well if you want protein and fats. You can feed them mostly food scraps (some extra grain definitely helps though), as well as any slugs etc you pick from your garden. In return, you get a regular source of eggs, and if you want, chicken. Furthermore, their poop will help fertilize the soil.

[Heron TSG]

We used to grow corn, and with 3 rows of 20, we have enough corn to eat corn on the cob every night for a month. (That's five people, so surely it'd last 5 months for one.)

[Cheddarius]

Hmmm, corn? 60 plants yields 5 months of corn on the cob every night? Sonerohi's plan is essentially complete sustenance from this 50 square feet...
Wait, did I read that right? Sonerohi, can you clarify? Based on your experiences, what kind of land do you need to feed one average adult male solely from that land?

[Grakelin]

My mother used to grow plants. We had corn in a roughly 20x20 foot block, chickens (that provided a lot of eggs, most of which went to waste despite my grandfather and I eating them every day until the chickens died), tomatoes (in a 5x5 foot block, but they were kind of gimpy), and some other European vegetables I can't recall the name of.

For the corn, she carved open fish heads and planted a seed in each of their mouths before burying them. Then she doused the whole place with pig blood. It wasn't worth it, imo.

[Cheddarius]

Can you estimate the yield?

[Grakelin]

Hard to say. The tomatoes were very small (I'm not sure if they were grape tomatoes or not), and they gave us about 3-4 days worth of salad ingredients. The corn was a different story. We only had them for one year before we moved out of that province, but there were at least 30-40 stalks (it wasn't a fully formed square, but instead rows set up in a 'U').

[HAMMERMILL]

Potatos are the most calorie dense crop per acre you can grow. They don't keep very well after harvest though and they grow down very deep so they can be a real pain for a layman to harvest.

What I've heard people do is buying large plastic garbage cans, punching holes in the bottom and filling them with soil and growing potatos like that. There are guides that can describe the process better then I can for that sort of thing though.

[Heron TSG]

Hmmm, corn? 60 plants yields 5 months of corn on the cob every night? Sonerohi's plan is essentially complete sustenance from this 50 square feet...

Well, we also had around twenty pounds of corn that went bad, due to not being eaten quickly enough, and being stored in a freezer for too long.

[Cheddarius]

So, potatoes. Is the Three Sisters method more efficient than potatoes alone? Will potatoes deplete the soil or whatnot? How much land should I expect to use to live on potatoes alone (obviously not very healthy, but hypothetically)?

[Lord Dakoth]

Legumes can replenish nitrogen in the soil, so it's not a bad idea to plant them every four years or so. Remember crop rotation.