How much food do I need to grow to feed a family?

For lots of people who set out to cultivate hydroponics at home, it's one of the big driving questions -- how much should I grow just to provide food for the dinner table?

Small commercial hydroponics is different -- you'll have different kinds of considerations around markets, distribution, etc. But for small hobbyist growers, it's common to base your first grow box purchase on how much you think you should have, just for your own consumption.

So how much food you need to feed your family? The short answer is, that depends on the size of your family. However, another short answer you can give is that most times, you don't need very much.

Your Shopping Cart

Before you try to figure out how many vegetables you'll need to grow in a hydroponic garden, take a look at your regular shopping routine. How many vegetables you actually use? You don't fill up your shopping cart with vegetables- you might throw a couple in, along with cereal, meat, cheese, pasta and all those other raw materials for meals. That's not counting all the ready-made meals and restaurant meals that you're going to be having each week.

When you get right down to it, you probably don't buy more produce than you would get from a couple of plants. Maybe a small family can use all of the food from 2 to 4 plants, and the larger family could use all of the food from 4 to 8 plants. The key is also diversification -- you don't really want more than a couple of plants of each type, or you might get really tired of eating the stuff.

Once plants finally start to produce, they actually produce quite a lot. Just look at the tomato plants that produce the small cherry or grape tomatoes. You get dozens of these little fruits from one plant -- that's over a period of time, but it gives you a little better of an idea of how much or how little cultivation you need to make side salads at dinnertime.

As you progress with hydroponics, you'll get better at measuring these kinds of dinnertime demands. You also get better at buying the right raw materials that go with your hydroponic vegetables to create cheap, healthy and easy meals. Growing hydroponic vegetables or getting other high-quality local produce can make you enjoy cooking more -- and it can make you value all of your food more. It's a great step towards sustainability and better living.