A lot of people love to push garden tools around.
There’s something deeply satisfying about it: the rake lines, the fresh-turned soil, the feeling that you “did something.” And sure—there’s honest value in sweat equity.
But if you’re doing time-constrained gardening, the tool-pushing isn’t the main event.
Thinking is.
Because the fastest way to waste an hour a day is to garden like a slot machine: keep pulling the handle and hope tomatoes fall out.
Push a Pencil for Gardening Success!
What you want instead is the engineer’s approach:
- Define the output
- Choose the system
- Calculate the inputs
- Allocate space
Then do the work once, correctly
That’s what “Math Is Your Friend” really means. Math isn’t cold. It’s kindness. It keeps you from planting yourself into a corner.
Start With the Only Question That Matters: How Much Food?
Before we talk varieties, beds, hydro, fertilizer, any of it—answer this:
What do you want the garden to produce in a week?
Not in vibes. In food.
Are You Hungry Yet?
Let’s keep it simple with a core menu that works for real life:
- Romaine (salads)
- Beefsteak tomatoes (salads, sandwiches)
- Green peppers (kitchen utility)
- Yellow squash (fast volume, dependable)
Now decide a target. Here are three “household intent” targets you can pick from for your Hour-a-Day garden:
- Light supplement: 3 salads/week + some cooking vegetables (May take 30-minutes a day)
- Strong supplement: 5–7 salads/week + steady cooking vegetables (45-minutes)
- Heavy producer: daily salads + surplus for neighbors/preserving – This is the Hour A Day profile.
You don’t need perfect numbers. You need a direction.
So let’s do engineer math: choose a target, then work backwards.
Output Math: Convert “Meals” Into “Plants”
Below are reasonable planning assumptions. They aren’t sacred. But they’re close enough to keep you from guessing.
Romaine
A full-size romaine head is roughly 8–12 oz trimmed depending on growing conditions. If your salads use about 6 oz of greens per person, a two-person salad is ~12 oz.
1 romaine head = 1 good two-person salad (roughly)
If you want 5 salads/week, you want 5 heads/week.
Romaine maturity is often 55–75 days, but with staggered planting you can harvest weekly.
A safe planning number for continuous harvest:
Plant 6–10 romaine per week of desired harvest, depending on heat, pests, and whether you do full-head harvest or “cut-and-come-again.”
For our simplified plan:
Want 5 heads/week? Plan on 40–60 romaine plants in rotation.
Beefsteak tomatoes
A healthy beefsteak plant in good conditions can do 10–20+ lbs/season depending on variety, heat management, and disease pressure.
For practical weekly planning in season:
Call it 2–5 lbs/week per plant during its best stretch.
If you want tomatoes for: sandwiches + salads most days → say 10 lbs/week. Then you’re looking at: 3–5 beefsteak plants in peak production
If you want enough to share or can:
6–10 plants (You should have enough to make frozen tomato sauce!)
Green Peppers
A productive pepper might yield 6–12 peppers/plant over a season. Weekly output varies, but in steady production:
1–2 peppers per plant per week isn’t crazy during peak. If you want:
7 peppers/week (one a day)? Then plan:
5–8 pepper plants to avoid feast/famine. We will be doing 10, or so.
Yellow Squash
Squash is the great humbler: it goes from “nothing” to “why is the kitchen full of squash?” fast.
A good yellow squash plant can easily do:
2–6 squash/week in peak
If you want: 10 squash/week? You often only need:
2–4 plants (and you’ll still be giving them away).
Squash comes with some fine print. They are “space hogs.” We have seen times when 3 squash will cover 20 percent of the garden. We have taken a vow to get them off the ground – but then you need to worry about shading, but we’ll come to that when our “Hour-a-Day” allows.
So now we have the first half of the engineer approach: plants needed.
Garden Space Planning
Next is the part most gardens fail at: How much space do those plants actually consume in your chosen system?
Space Math: Plants Are Not “Points,” They’re “Footprints”
Garden plans fail because people treat plants like dots on paper. But plants are volumes with light needs, airflow needs, root needs, and harvest access needs.
Here are conservative footprints for planning:
- Romaine: 1 sq ft each (12″ x 12″)
- Beefsteak tomato: 4–9 sq ft each (depends on pruning/caging; tighter in greenhouse)
- Green pepper: 1–2 sq ft each
- Yellow squash: 16–25 sq ft each (it sprawls – even if you trellis and go vertical)
Now we can do basic layout math. Let’s run a realistic “strong supplement” example:
- Romaine: 50 plants × 1 sq ft = 50 sq ft
- Tomatoes: 6 plants × 6 sq ft = 36 sq ft
- Peppers: 8 plants × 1.5 sq ft = 12 sq ft
- Squash: 3 plants × 20 sq ft = 60 sq ft
Total: 158 sq ft of productive footprint.
(The Garden Engineer pipes up, “Square root of 158 square feet is 12.56 – call it 13-feet on a side. But you will need walkways and overplanting to account for loss due to washouts and bugs…)
That’s not huge. That’s a medium bedroom.
But it’s only true if you allocate it correctly and pick the right growing systems.
So now let’s run the same plan through four systems:
Garden TYPE Impacts Garden SIZE
In our way of thinking, only four garden types are of interest. (We will get to the sprouting chambers and mushrooms later…) For now, just consider your base eating crop and where you will harvest them:
- Dirt garden
- Deep Water Culture (DWC)
- NFT (nutrient film technique)
- Raised beds in the greenhouse
Each has different “math multipliers.”
System 1: Dirt Garden Math
Dirt is forgiving. Dirt is also deceptive, because weeds and watering eat time. Damn bugs and birds.
Dirt spacing (practical)
- Romaine: 12″ centers, in blocks for efficiency
- Tomatoes: 3–4 ft centers if you want less disease pressure
- Peppers: 18″ centers
- Squash: 4–5 ft centers (or trellis, but let’s keep it simple)
Dirt example layout
If you want that 158 sq ft footprint, you’ll usually allocate more like 200–300 sq ft in dirt because:
- you need walking lanes
- you need access
- you lose some space to odd shapes and edges
Engineer rule: in dirt, multiply plant footprint by 1.5–2.0 for real-world space. Two bedrooms worth of space. Still a 13 X 25 patch isn’t impossible.
So:
158 sq ft × 1.7 ≈ 270 sq ft (very believable)
That’s a dirt plot about 15′ x 18′. Totally manageable. More is better, less total failure potential.
System 2: DWC Math (Deep Water Culture)
DWC changes the math because you’re no longer spacing for soil competition. You’re spacing for canopy and access.
DWC strengths
- Fast growth
- Precise nutrition
- Less weeding
- Great for greens and peppers
DWC constraints
- Tomatoes get big fast and demand support
- Squash is awkward unless you’ve designed for it
- You’re limited by container count, lid hole spacing, and light
DWC plant density guidelines
- Romaine: 1 plant per 6″ net cup site if you harvest young; 8–10″ if full head
- Peppers: 1 plant per 8–12″ site
- Tomatoes: usually 1 per bucket (or large site with aggressive support)
- Squash: generally not worth it in small DWC unless you’re committed
Engineer translation:
DWC is fantastic for romaine + peppers, possible for tomatoes, and usually a “no” for yellow squash unless you build a system around it.
DWC example plan (time-constrained)
- Use DWC to carry the romaine rotation and maybe peppers.
- Keep squash in dirt/raised bed.
- Tomatoes: either dirt or greenhouse bed, unless you have a dedicated DWC tomato bucket setup.
During the last Amazon Prime day, Vevor had a real deal on an 8 (five-gallon) bucket DWC kit with air pump and more for under $150. So…
If you already have such an 8-bucket DWC kit, a clean core allocation might look like:
- 4 containers: tomatoes (one per bucket)
- 4 containers: peppers (one per bucket) or 2 peppers per bucket if you’ve done it before
And romaine? In DWC it’s better as a separate shallow tote raft or a dedicated greens rig, because romaine wants quantity sites, not giant buckets.
System 3: NFT Math (Nutrient Film Technique)
NFT is the accountant’s system: it’s all about site count, flow, and uptime.
NFT strengths
Very high yield per square foot for greens
- Easy staggered planting
- Clean harvest routine
- Perfect for “Hour-a-Day” rhythm
NFT constraints
- Sensitive to power interruptions
- Roots can clog channels
- Big fruiting plants (tomato/squash) are harder unless system is robust
Engineer translation: NFT is the weapon of choice for romaine.
NFT romaine math example
If you want 5 heads/week, and you’re running 60 plants in rotation:
You need 60 sites.
If you use 2″ net cups on 8″ spacing:
Every 8 feet of channel gives ~12 sites (roughly)
So:
60 sites / 12 sites per 8 ft ≈ 5 channels of 8 ft. That’s a compact wall of food.
This is where math becomes freedom: you can design the whole lettuce supply in a footprint that barely inconveniences the greenhouse. In a future column we’ll keep you safe from the “sun problem” and the heat problem. But NFT is a food megasystem for greens.
System 4: Raised Beds in the Greenhouse
Raised beds are dirt with discipline. You control weeds better, amend easier, and you can trellis and shade more predictably.
Greenhouse raised-bed multipliers
- You can tighten tomato spacing if you prune and trellis
- You can protect romaine from heat with shade cloth
- You can run peppers tighter and keep them productive longer
Engineer rule: greenhouse beds can reduce the footprint multiplier back toward 1.2–1.5 because the layout is more controlled.
So that earlier 158 sq ft footprint might become: 158 × 1.3 ≈ 205 sq ft of actual bed area (plus aisles)
And in practice, greenhouse beds help you keep production steady when weather goes sideways.
Engineer’s Summary: A Simple Mixed-System Plan
If we want the core foods (romaine, beefsteak, peppers, yellow squash) and we’re time-constrained, the easiest “no-drama” model is:
- NFT (or a simple greens hydro rig): romaine production engine
- DWC or greenhouse bed: peppers and/or tomatoes
- Dirt or raised bed: yellow squash (because it’s a sprawl beast)
That division is math-driven. Not ideology-driven.
It keeps each crop in the system that suits it, and it keeps you from trying to force squash into a hydro setup where it eats time.
The Real Point of Math
Math isn’t just spacing and yields. Math is how you tell the truth about your time.
Since we’re only doing an hour a day, then every unnecessary task is theft. The weeds don’t care about your intentions. The plants don’t care about your optimism. Nature runs on math.
So should you.
In the next installment, we’ll take the same four crops and do even more useful things:
- build a one-page “garden production budget”
- map it to your actual available space in dirt, DWC buckets, NFT channels, and greenhouse beds
- and show what you can realistically produce without turning “Hour-a-Day Gardening” into “Two Hours of Catch-Up.”
Write when you’ve got the hour—and let the math do the heavy lifting.
We’re still growing,
George and Elaine