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I am curious, I have enough space to grow my own vegetables under grow lights. How much space would I need for one person to survive or at least have decent yield? Let's leave fruit and meat, bread out of it, how much to have at least own vegetables?

I could use T5 - 6500K 4000+ lumen flourescent lights. They seem cheap, in 2-10 euro/dollar range. I could probably use electric timer, garden soil, some sort of aluminium foil to reflect light and some plastic containers and stack up more levels with wood, kind of wood shelves.

I could plant what I can harvest relatively fast(30 days till 60 days) - radish, lettuce, spinach, beet,.. and starting seeds every 1-2 weeks so I would not run out of fresh food.

What are your opinions? It would be helpful if you share some experiences before I jump into the experiment. I do grow some herbs under grow light and had learned some things, but veggies are larger level.

I am interested in yield per square foot or m2 in 1 month or 2 months, what to expect. That would make things easier for me.

Thank you!!!!

John21
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The UK "5 a day" health advice amounts to a recommendation of 400g of vegetables per day. Most people would have a hard time eating that much radish, lettuce, etc.

You also need root vegetables and legumes which are not so fast maturing. The answer will probably "a lot more space than you hoped".

One study in the 1970s concluded that you need about 4,000 square feet of outdoor garden space per person, plus another 4,000 square feet of storage space for a completely self-sufficient vegetarian diet.

That study concluded you would need to include around 85 potato plants and 50 carrot plants per person per year for self sufficiency, for example.

alephzero
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