Harvesting in the vegetable garden: too much or just enough?

The harvest in a regular vegetable garden is short and intense: a lot of the same and everything at once. In the Planty Garden, you plant just what you need and spread the harvest:

The problem with harvesting vegetables in a regular vegetable garden is that everything ripens simultaneously. Too much at the same time. That's because people sow in long rows and all at once.

People with a vegetable garden often boast about the enormous yield of their vegetable garden. Kilos of beans and beets. But it's a lot of work to pick, clean, and freeze all those vegetables. While at the same time, these vegetables are for sale for next to nothing in the stores.

And be honest: how many heads of lettuce can you eat in one week? Not twenty, right? So half of them are already blossoming before you harvest them:

In my Planty Garden, I plant just what we think we need. And what we like.

As soon as I harvest a patch empty, I immediately sow or plant a new vegetable in it. Sometimes, one 30 by 30 cm patch is planted three or four times per season. This way, I spread the harvest over the whole year.

Since we all love lettuce, I use a few patches for different varieties. We harvest from those for a long time. Because instead of waiting until the whole head is ready, we pick some leaves soon.

We continue to do so until the lettuce burst into bloom and is no longer tasty. This way, we stretch the harvest.

Before you think that one box of 120 by 120 centimeters yields nothing, this is the minimum yield of 1 season:

Not bad, huh? And since you plant the patches sometimes three or four times a year, it's even more in reality.

But against the yield of a vegetable garden are the costs. So let's look at that too: