Garden Yield Calculator

Base Expected Yield is intentionally the theoretical maximum — Number of Plants times Avg Yield per Plant — calculated before any real-world adjustment. Growing Conditions and Fertilizer Use only affect Adjusted Yield, which is the number meant to reflect what you'll actually harvest given your specific setup.

Growing Conditions applies a multiplier to Adjusted Yield: roughly 0.5x for poor conditions (shade, poor soil) versus a full 1.0x for ideal conditions (full sun, great soil), with average landing at 0.8x. That means poor conditions alone can cut your realistic harvest roughly in half compared to ideal conditions, before even factoring in watering or fertilizer.

Plant Count and Avg Yield per Plant are the two inputs with the largest overall effect on Adjusted Yield across their full ranges, since both scale the yield roughly proportionally. Growing Conditions and fertilizer add meaningful multipliers too, but doubling your plant count has more headroom than improving conditions from average to ideal, which caps out at a smaller relative gain.

It multiplies Adjusted Yield in pounds by a flat average of about 150 calories per pound, a rough figure meant for a typical mixed-vegetable garden rather than any single crop. A garden of mostly low-calorie leafy greens or high-calorie starchy vegetables will diverge noticeably from this average, so treat it as a ballpark rather than a nutrition-label-accurate number.

Watering Consistency scales Adjusted Yield from a 0.6x floor at the lowest setting up toward 1.0x with perfect drip irrigation, reflecting how inconsistent water stresses plants and reduces productive growth. It moves the final yield by a comparable amount to plant count and average yield per plant, so consistent watering is one of the higher-leverage changes you can make without adding plants.