So 100 square feet of land can yield 200-300 lbs of food.Harvest metrics: From a good garden with healthy soil and moderate skill level of gardener, you can expect the following harvest from a 100 square feet Three Sisters garden:
- Corn, 60 ears, or about 35 to 50 pounds shelled wet corn (assuming 2 well pollinated ears per plant)
- Beans, 30 pounds or more (assuming half-pound production per plant)
- Squash, about 150+ pounds mixed squash if summer and winter squash equally planted. If you plant only zucchini, this excellent producer can generate 300 pounds of squash in this garden.
- Note: a 9 square feet garden will not produce 10% of the 100 square feet garden. The 100 square feet garden is the optimum size, maximizing pollination, beneficial predators, living mulch, and all other factors, much better than a smaller garden.
So for one person, I'd say maybe 200-400 square feet would do it. Maybe add to that a larger field of wheat to produce flour (and bread). Then you just need to focus on finding protein sources like fish, birds, and small game.Some hens might do the trick too, but you'd need to sacrifice some land to produce food for the hens.
But think of all the areas in a suburban environment where you have 100 square feet of just useless grass and landscaping. People could easily survive a collapse. Couple that with the fact that the first year can be hard as fuck and a lot of people aren't going to starve to death. The average fatso can make it to the next season just fine on his body fat.
