1642 pounds of veggie from an allotment?

[Pancho]

According to various web sources, including

Self-sown salad days  - Telegraph

an allotment produces 1642 pounds of veg per annum.

Does your allotment or garden come anywhere near this surely mythical abundance? I have a big garden and we don't get anywhere near that. I'm sure a competent and attentive gardener could do better than me but 1642 lbs from an allotment?

[geraldc]

You'd find it hard to eat that much veg in a year.

[Regulator]

If it were a full allotment plot (most are 1/2, 1/3 or 1/4 plots these day) then it's possible, with successional sowing. 

For example, you could easily get a couple of hundred pounds of potatoes out of a single bed.  I've got 15 raspberry plants in a relatively small space.  They can average 10lb fruit per plant over a season.

Add in some of the heavier crops (e.g. pumpkins and squash) and the 1642lbs looms ever closer...

[border-rider]

We got 600lbs of Bramleys off our old tree at the last house one year

[Eccentrica Gallumbits]

My grandad had a massive allotment with a huge strawberry patch. One year in the 80s the strawberries did so well that we were all eating them at at least two meals a day, giving pounds and pounds of them away, and then my mum started making jam with them. And then we started giving the jam away - my grandad would take jars to the pub and to the bookies' and just hand them out to his cronies. But at the end of the summer when jam making was over we counted up the jam still in the cupboard and there was 110lb. 

[Cudzoziemiec]

One year we had raspberrys still fruiting into November. Raspberrys and snow! 

This year we made 150 jars of gherkins, I don't know how many pounds per jar but they were big.

[Bledlow]

Taking the average 2008 British commercial yield of 42.7 tons of potatoes per hectare, one would get 1080 kg or 2380 lbs of potatoes from a standard size allotment of 10 square rods/253 square metres.

Of course, most other vegetables yield less*, & you have to allocate some space for access, shed, etc, but it shows that the quoted yield is credible. Depends on your crop mix, though.

*Average yield of unspecified fresh vegetables (including salad, mushrooms, peas, carrots, brassicas etc) was 21 tons per hectare in 2008, but some even more, e.g. sugar beet 64 tons.

All stats from -
http://www.defra.gov.uk/evidence/statistics/foodfarm/general/auk/latest/excel/index.htm

[Pancho]

(Why does that food related URL have "auk" in it?)

All rather impressive.

I shall gird my digging muscles this year and see what I can get out of the patch.

With the price of grub going up in the shops, it'll soon start to make economic sense to put the children to work in the garden at weekends.

[Regulator]

Taking the average 2008 British commercial yield of 42.7 tons of potatoes per hectare, one would get 1080 kg or 2380 lbs of potatoes from a standard size allotment of 10 square rods/253 square metres.

Of course, most other vegetables yield less*, & you have to allocate some space for access, shed, etc, but it shows that the quoted yield is credible. Depends on your crop mix, though.

*Average yield of unspecified fresh vegetables (including salad, mushrooms, peas, carrots, brassicas etc) was 21 tons per hectare in 2008, but some even more, e.g. sugar beet 64 tons.

All stats from -
http://www.defra.gov.uk/evidence/statistics/foodfarm/general/auk/latest/excel/index.htm

Don't forget that many allotment holder get more than one crop per season from the same land.

[Cudzoziemiec]

...standard size allotment of 10 square rods...