Stop buying groceries! Here’s how I plan my garden to fill my pantry for the whole year.
Want to stop relying on the grocery store? It all starts with your garden plan. In this video, I’m breaking down the “Pantry Math” I use to ensure our garden produces enough food to keep our shelves full through the winter.
From starting grocery store Thai Chili seeds to calculating exactly how many San Marzano plants you need for a year of sauce, I’m sharing the intentional varieties and quantities that make our homestead self-sufficient.
Topics covered:
The “Pantry First” assessment: Grow what you actually eat.
Seed Starting: An experiment with store-bought peppers.
The Math: Why we plant 27+ San Marzano tomatoes.
Multi-purpose crops: The best beans and root vegetables for long-term storage.
Whether you have a small backyard or acres of land, these intentional choices will help you grow a garden that actually feeds you.
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Thanks for watching!
Steph and Chris
#pantryliving #gardenplanning #selfsufficiency #seedstarting #homesteading #foodstorage
20 Comments
Dear God, please let the weather break soon so we can garden again ❤😂
Great topic! Thanks for sharing, it’s really helpful
Enjoyed your video! I picked up my paste tomatoes seeds yesterday after going thru my stash of seeds. Im excited for the garden season and will start flower amd veggie seeds in a few weeks!
Thats for the information and inspiration!
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Are the large Italian frying peppers also good for fresh eating? Aaaaand… do you have a video on kimchi? Thanks for sharing this video!
great video ty
Did my seed starts on Friday, so far 27 tomatoes and 15 peppers. Thyme, oregano also. Will be doing direct seed planting. April 1st is last frost date for me.
I'm wishing you good luck with those seeds from store bought peppers. I tried a few times and it never germinated for me. Hope it does for you. Love your videos. We're in the same planting zone 5b.
I'm trying to be a bit more intentional this year since my garden isn't very big. I will end up with 50-60 tomato plants this year (mostly paste: San Marzano, Roma, Amish Paste. Some slicers: Cherokee Purple, Black Beauty, Old German. And some cherry toms: one each of about 9 varieties.). I have so many jars of pickles and relish on the pantry shelf from last year's overabundance of cucumbers, so I will cut back and grow primarily for fresh eating. I had a crappy green bean year in 2025, so I need to concentrate on growing enough to put on the shelf to last a couple years. My freezer is full of bell peppers from last year, so I will grow less, but I need a ton of jalapeño and serrano peppers for the mass amount of salsa I need to can up to meet my husband needs! Other than those things, there will be a few things I grow a small amount of like beets, shallots, and onions, but I will grow a lot of flowers, too, for the pollinators. I'd love to grow a Fall garden or early Spring garden, but my backyard here in Southern California doesn't get sun during those times, so I can't grow my favorites like broccoli, cauliflower, lettuce, etc…
Great video. I'd love to see how you start all your seeds.
Could we have a recipe using beans and sprouted mung beans? Perhaps with pasta?
I live in town so mu garden is just 2 3ft x 6ft raised beds. I also have 3 or 4 big pots. Last year I had 4 tomato plants that produced enough tomatoes for the 2 of us to have fresh eating PLUS canned tomato basil soup for us for 2 years. This years tomatoes will be pasta sauce and maybe salsa. I find with the 4 or 5 plants I can get enough to rotate canning projects biannually. The other bed will be green beans just for fresh eating and maybe freeze a bit. Also green peppers in the pots as I use container friendly seeds. I drop Basil in with my tomatoes (keeps away the bad bugs…. So far) so loads of tomato, basil, cheese salads all summer.
Thanks 💜 great video. Impeach hoping to get enough green beans, tomatoes. Every year I end yp buying at farmer's markets. So you helped me to figure out how much I need to grow for just 2 of us..
Well, as each year, we will do as much tomatoes that we can. As we are not tomato heaven, we are doing our sauce with everything, from paste to cherry tomato. And 3/4 of our yield is still green when we pick them, so it's a game of getting them red and freeze a batch every few days until everything is red…or yellow. I'm planning on around 10-15 plants of long keeper tomatoes to eat fresh all year long. Other than that, it's a game of fingers crossed the onions, leeks, carrots and beets works well this year. If not, oh well, most of it sell for cheap at the grocery store.
I'm on year 2 of getting my stash of seeds low so I can buy fresh of what I want. I have a problem as I can't not plant seeds even if I know they are not doing that good here.
Saved some seeds from a grocery store Honey Nut squash – they're SUUUPER sweet and shaped like a mini butter nut squash. Crossing all my fingers and toes they germinate. I could eat hundreds of them all by myself in a single year. I just cut them in half, roast them in the oven, and devour like candy.
Hi, you have very good info. Thank you!
I am in Houston. I have planted 3 types of tomatoes, 5 types of peppers, 2 types of onions, carrots, zucchini, mint, herbs, cilantro, basil. I am going to try cabbage this year.
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Mini pumpkins just because I like them, other pumpkin for eating, long beans, yellow wax beans, snack tomatoes, cabbages, and anything else that will fit in my smallish yard. Anything I manage to grow is something else I don't need to buy.
I’m in the States, Louisiana to be exact. After watching this video, I used your methods to start pepper seeds. This makes my 3rd attempt. Still no sprouts yet. But I did the same with my okra seeds. Took 3 days and I had about a 90% successful sprouting. Cant wait to see if these stubborn pepper seeds finally sprout also.
I need to learn how to do some canning.