Growing To Feed Us: 2026 Gardening Challenge to Myself

I’ve been gardening for many years, and none of those years have been hobby gardening. My skill and intuition with plants has grown over the years with lots of trial and error and research, but from the start I gardened to preserve food and feed my family as a way to replace grocery store shopping. Each year I grow a higher percentage of our family’s food needs and this year is no exception. This year, however, I’m hoping to pass 50% and get closer to 60-70% of our needs. It’s going be a challenge, but I’m up for it. For our family of 4, knowing off the top of my head almost everything and how much of each thing we eat in an entire year, is the first step to success.

My 2026 growing list:

55 pounds of potatoes ( various varieties, some longer storing than others. I will can, freeze and store in the basement). God willing we will end up with 250-400 pounds of potatoes. Which will last us 1 whole year.

30 sweet potato slips ( two varieties, storage and I will likely freeze some ). This will ideally produce 60-110 pounds.

Shelling peas, 2 16 foot rows ( I will freeze these) spring. And 1 pound planted for Fall.

60-70 different pepper plants of various varieties to freeze in slices and use in sauces and salsa that I will can.

25-30 different tomato plants for canning of marinara, barbecue sauce, diced tomatoes, ketchup, salsa, and a few quarts of sun-dried tomatoes, and herbs.

25-40 beets to can as pickled beets, yay blood pressure struggles. Fall garden.

Carrots - various amounts. We shall see how successful this is. I’ve learned a LOT this winter and have put that knowledge to use with my first round of planted carrots. Stored, canned or stored is what we’ll do. Spring and Fall.

310 cloves of garlic plates last fall, so far it appears I’ll harvest around 290-300 bulbs.

400 onions, some I planted last fall and some that will be oammted this spring. To eat throughout the year from the freezer or dry storage, and some to can and use in sauces and salsas.

Lots of herbs, several plants of each and dozens of plants of a few- I started parsley, calendula, borage, indoors and will direct sow or transplant sage, dill, basil. I will purchase more rosemary, oregano, yarrow and thyme to plant.

4-6 4 cucumber plants. Some years I tried to can enough of one product to last two years, that way I don’t have to garden and preserve it each year. Last year I grew enough cucumbers and canned enough that it should last 2 years, but we ate more than I thought we would. I will grow cucumbers to eat fresh, and I will likely end up canning just a few jars. Some years we devour pickles, and some years we go through them slowly.

86 leek plants. I love to put leeks in soups and stews or beef pie, or in any broth that I make. In the past, I simply chopped and dehydrate my leeks, and that will be my plan once again.

60-100 bush bean plants. These will be eaten fresh, frozen and canned.

Dent corn to dry and use over the next year

Pop corn to dry and use over the next year

Sweet corn to can and freeze

3-5 zucchini plants. Most of this will be eaten fresh, I know. The rest of it will be shredded and frozen or shredded and dehydrated for soups and bread in the coming year.

3-5 butternut type squash plants, my goal is to store most of this in the basement and hopefully I will be able to freeze just a little bit of it as well

4-5 acorn squash plants. My husband will only eat a little bit of acorn squash and that’s because there’s only one acorn squash meal that he likes. Other than that, I will eat half of an acorn squash myself in one sitting I love it. So I will dry storage most of these and eat them mostly myself. I chose varieties that are good for longer storage.

Lots of Tahitian melon, yellow squash and honey nut squash! All for storage, summer and fall consumption.

1-2 pumpkin plants. My daughter would like to plant a carving pumpkin. As long as I can find space will do that, but I will also be growing my absolute favorite Cinderella pumpkins. I canned a lot of pumpkin last year so I won’t need as much this year. But I do love to eat roasted pumpkin and of course I will be just a little bit for pies and soup or chili later on.

2-4 melon plants including cantaloupe and watermelon. We will simply eat these fresh.

We have 180 strawberry plants, which will all produce something. We do not eat a lot of jams and jellies first of all it’s not a staple food second of all we don’t eat that much sugar and third I would rather rather eat frozen berries in the winter. Whatever is grown will be frozen or eaten fresh. I made enough strawberry jam last year to last us until 2027. This year we harvested a total of 40 pounds of strawberries from our backyard!

We have 30 - 35 red raspberries bushes everything will be eaten fresh or frozen

We have 5 elderberry trees. Two produced last year, they should all produce this year, syrup that’s what it’s for.

We have six blackberry bushes everything will be fresh or frozen

We have four black raspberry bushes, and once again everything will be eaten fresh or frozen

Jams and jellies are fun and cute, but they’re not a staple food in our house. I won’t survive off of them if the grid goes down. We don’t need a ton of sugar and I need to spend my time in my energy canning things like beans or broth and marinara sauce and beef stew and so on and so forth.

Not in the garden, but still important to note, last year I grew 200 pounds of meat from our meat rabbits. This year my goal is 300-400 pounds of meat from our meat rabbits. This has significantly cut our cost of beef down!

I am trying new things this year too!

I’m growing several rows of black turtle beans (aka black beans) and several rows of great northern beans and a few Navy Beans. These will be dried and stored or will be canned as baked beans or canned black beans. Talk about grocery store reduction!

Growing to replace the grocery store

Growing food for your family to replace the grocery store takes lots of planning, but it’s doable! Even in smaller spaces. If you’re gardening this year and hope to replace more grocery store items next year, think about something you eat the most of, research growing it in your zone, and then figure out which varieties and how much you need to plant to replace half or all of that need. Some examples of what I picked first - tomato products and squashes. Those are simpler things to calculate and preserve. Or you could pick carrots or potatoes! There are no wrong answers here unless you say “ we like Monsanto or I want to use pesticides “.

More on growing to replace the grocery store later! For now, I just wanted to give you a visual description of what it takes for a family of 4 who eats Whole Foods based.