How do you know, how much food to grow for your family?

Here in the Southern part of California, I am starting to plan the transition to cold weather crops. Right now we are in the hot season, which stretches from July through September. It’s followed by the cold season, which runs from October to April and last the warm season which runs from April through September. I also need to keep in mind that the weather are unstable from April until summer solstice, with chances of light frost.

I have more than one garden, here on our small 1/2 acre homestead. In the back, I have 13 raised beds. 10 are 8 x 4, and 3 are round 4’ beds. The back are divided into two parts with our animal pens (chicken and ducks) in the middle. Along the side of the house we have rabbits. The total growing space of this is 500 square feet.
In the front of the house, I am building a forest garden on an area that’s 3300 square feet. I have all trees in, most of the shrubs and crawlers, and have started planting vegetables and herbs.

As I  am doing the planning for the backyard, I keep coming back to the question of how much I need to grow, in order to feet our family. We are 5 adults, so in total we will need 4.5 million calories to be completely self sufficient in food.. We can’t grow everything here, at least not yet. We are still buying oils, sugar, rice and meat, but I want to as a minimum, to always grow a years worth of the produce we need.
As always, when I start this planning, it’s hard to figure our, how much to grow of eat thing.
Several things needs to be considered:
Can the crop be preserved for later eating?
How long will it last while fresh?
How much of this do we actually eat in a year?
How do I ensure that I have enough diversity in our diet?

As things are now, I grow 13 different kinds of fruit and berries plus over 40 different kinds of vegetables, herbs and spices.

It’s hard to do this planning. Some things I know, like that I will need at least 20# of garlic, 240 pounds of sweet potatoes, 40 pounds of onions and around 40 pounds of leeks. These numbers I know because it’s what I used to buy each year. Of everything else I am lost.
This summer for example, I am growing way too many English cucumbers. I have harvested over 300 cucumbers so far. We have eaten a lot fresh, I have pickled and frozen some, and dehydrated a lot too. In the end though, I have also given a lot away to our neighbors. There are only so much cucumber soup and salads you can eat, before you get tired of eating it.

So I am wondering how others do this planning?  How do you know how much to plant of a crop in your garden?

Not sure if it's possible but it on't hurt to give it a good go

Almond Thompson wrote:

Not sure if it's possible but it on't hurt to give it a good go

Thank you, It’s a good guide, but needs adjustments to fit a family as ours with lots of food allergies, and I think we will have to start noting down how much we grow each year and compare it to the calories needed.
While we don’t have a lot of berry bushes yet, we have a wider variety of fruit trees, since it’s so hot here. The only fruits I buy are pears and bananas. It’s too hot to grow pears here, and my banana trees aren’t producing. We also grow several exotic fruit trees like passion fruit, strawberry guava and Natal plums. Plus we grow a lot of citrus.
As for vegetables, I grow 5 times as much winter squash, as what’s on the list. Winter squash are something we eat a lot, and love in so many dishes. It’s also very easy to grow in our hot climates. On the other hand, we grow fewer beans and peas, and a lot more cabbage and collards.

pretty cool! It would definitely need tweaking depending on how much of each thing you guys eat. I think it's just a guideline.

Also check out the Annual Staple Crop Calculator, it has quite detailed data on various plant's yields:

https://permies.com/wiki/153291/Annual-Staple-Crop-Calculator-Pay