Planning a Year of Eating

Work backwards from the kitchen, not forwards from the seed box

6 minIntermediateUpdated 2026-10-23 Planning a Year of Eating

You will learn

Turn a week of real meals into an annual crop target
Identify the hungry gap in your own climate
Fill the gap with stores, standing crops and fast sowings

Count what you actually eat

Most plans fail because they start at the seed catalogue. Start at the kitchen instead. For one ordinary week, write down the weight of every vegetable and staple your household eats. Not what you intend to eat. What you actually eat.

A typical two adult household gets through something like 3 kg of potatoes, 1 kg of onions, 2 kg of mixed roots, 1.5 kg of greens, 2 kg of tomatoes in season and 0.5 kg of dry beans in a week. Multiply by 50 and you have your real annual target: 150 kg of potatoes, 50 kg of onions, 25 kg of dry beans and so on.

Those numbers are far more useful than any generic planting chart.

💡 Keep the kitchen scales on the counter for one week. That week sets your whole plan.

Turn kilograms into beds

Now divide each target by the yield per square metre. 150 kg of potatoes at 3.5 kg per square metre is 43 square metres. 50 kg of onions at 2.5 is 20 square metres. 25 kg of dry beans at 0.25 is 100 square metres, which is usually the moment people discover how expensive home grown protein is in land.

Add 25 percent to every figure for losses and you have a bed plan that is tied to real eating rather than hope.

If the total is bigger than your plot, you now have a clear decision to make instead of a vague disappointment in September. Cut the bean target, buy lentils, and give the ground to potatoes and squash.

The hungry gap

The hardest part of the year is not winter. It is the stretch from when the stores run out to when the new crops arrive: roughly March to May in temperate Europe, and February to April in Portugal.

By then the potatoes are sprouting, the squash has gone soft, the onions are shooting and the overwintered brassicas have been picked over. Meanwhile the spring sowings are still six weeks from harvest. Historically this was the season people went hungry, and it is the season that catches out every modern grower in their second year.

Plan for it explicitly. A stored crop that runs out in February is a planning failure, not bad luck.

💡 Mark the gap on your calendar in red before you plan anything else.

Four ways to fill it

First, standing crops that wait in the ground: leeks, parsnips, kale, chard, purple sprouting broccoli and January sown broad beans all crop in the gap itself. These are the most valuable things in the whole plan.

Second, better storage so the stores last longer. Late maincrop potatoes in a proper cool dark clamp will hold into April, where early varieties will not see February.

Third, preserved food: dried beans, bottled tomatoes, sauerkraut and dried fruit are gap food by design.

Fourth, fast spring sowings. Radish in 25 days, rocket in 30, spinach and turnip in 40 to 50 from a February sowing under fleece will start producing just as the stores end.

💡 Purple sprouting broccoli and leeks are the two crops that most reliably bridge March and April.

Write the year on one page

Draw twelve columns, one per month. In each, write what you will be harvesting fresh, what you will be taking out of store, and what you will be sowing. Any month where the harvest and store rows are both thin is a month you will be shopping.

Do this before you order seed and the seed order writes itself. Do it after and you will buy three kinds of lettuce again.

Expect the first version to have two or three empty months. That is normal and useful. Fixing a hole on paper in December costs nothing, while discovering it in March costs a season.

Check yourself

Where should an annual food plan start?

Weighing what your household actually eats for one week gives real annual targets that a catalogue never will.

When is the hungry gap in temperate Europe?

Stores are exhausted and spring sowings are not ready, so roughly March to May is the thinnest part of the year.

Which crop is most useful for bridging the hungry gap?

Purple sprouting broccoli crops in March and April, exactly when stores have run out and nothing else is ready.

25 kg of dry beans at 0.25 kg per square metre needs roughly how much ground?

25 divided by 0.25 is 100 square metres, which shows clearly how much land home grown protein costs.

Try it for real: Build your twelve month food sheet

Weigh every vegetable and staple your household eats for one full week.
Multiply each figure by 50 to get an annual target in kilograms.
Divide each target by the yield per square metre and add 25 percent.
Draw twelve columns and fill in harvest, store and sow for each month.
Circle the empty months and choose one standing crop to fix each.

🛒 Gear for this skill

🌾Survival seed bankSee on Amazon →🥫Preserving jarsSee on Amazon →📙Vegetable growing bookSee on Amazon →🏡Self-sufficiency bookSee on Amazon →

See all the gear →

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Next lesson: Getting the Harvest to Next Spring →

Sources

Written and checked by the Human Skills team against the sources below. How we check our content

RHS Grow Your Own
FAO Food Balance Sheets
Cornell Cooperative Extension, Vegetable Garden Planning

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