We're going to try to feed the whole family this year. could really use some ideas on how big the garden has to be its zone 6B. Will also be doing 100 ft² sorghum patch. Canning and freezing as well.

Quite big, to be perfectly honest. Are you talking about "forget the super market, I don't want to buy any food at all this year"? Or more like "we want to have a nice entirely home made meal every day but still plan to acquire some food from stores"? There's a HUGE difference. Vegetables and fruit take up a lot of space for the calories they provide, if you're trying to completely live off of your land. Much less, feeding a family of 5 completely off of the land.

Concur: You can probably provide sufficient vegetables on a quarter -to half acre. Note tho. that fresh vegetables will be seasonal so that a lot of meals will be from canned, frozen, or dehydrated. Been there in the thirties and 40's. meals get quite monotonous in the winter. Fruits are also seasonal. Straws berries ae fast to come into production with blackberries. raspberries, grapes just behind. Fruit trees take a couple of years to establish (apples, cherries, peaches , pears, plums) This is assuming of course that you are a pure vegetarian. Your biggest concern will be growing, harvesting, processing grains. Corn is the easiest to grow, most productive, and easiest to hand grind. Like I said I have been there, but we also grew our own hogs, chickens , turkeys and a couple of milk cows. Wild game and fish supplemented our diet. BUT it was nothing like food available to day. We ate anything we could grow in the ground , raise in a pen, plus any thing that dared to walk across the place or swim in the creeks.

You can google something like 'how much to plant per person and get this kind of thing- scroll down past the chat and find a list. The chat though discusses weihing some factors in with the list- (like does everyone even like asparagus)
https://www.theprairiehomestea...

I think your zone 6 is similar to parts of Maryland, possibly frost dates change just a little. Here is University of Maryland Grow it Eat it resource. Lots of information that should apply to you as well.
http://extension.umd.edu/hgic/...

Tennessee may have similar resources.

60 years ago, my folks raised nine kids doing that. It took two large gardens, an orchard and all nine kids helping.

The food was good but I suspect these days no one (especially the children) will want to work that hard.

We didn't have a freezer so food was dried, cold storage or canned.

And as Farmer Dill commented on the food being monotonous, it was and it wasn't always what everyone liked.

Good luck with your effort. Please keep us posted.

I try to feed our family of three, me, my husband and my dad. My dad really doest count because he doesn't really like vegetables.
I have 25 raised beds of different sizes and I added the sq footage up and I think it was about 600. Maybe a little more. Being in zone 8b, I am growing something all year. At first i tried a little bit of everything, but now I focus on things I can grow well and have a lot of it for freezing. I did take a canning class this year and hope to put that to good use.
I plant 2 4x16 beds of onions. 2 4x8 beds of potatoes twice per year. This will almost cover me for the whole year. A 4x4 bed of carrots lasts a good while and I will probably increase to 4x8 because they are such a good staple to have. 2 Japanese eggplants will feed an army. I could go on, but i think the recommendation to look for something on the internet is good, have seen articles before. Also check out mother earth news. Keep a journal, it helps to track what worked, yields and adjustments for the next year.

Tracy, did you mean two Japanese eggplants will feed an army or two raised beds of eggplants?

Deeby said:Tracy, did you mean two Japanese eggplants will feed an army or two raised beds of eggplants?

Just two plants! I gave way dozens until people ran when they saw me coming. When we got our first freeze those plants were loaded. Shame i let it go to waste. A good lesson in growing what you eat. We don't eat much eggplant.

I have a family of 5 and something that is a goal for us is simply being *more* self sufficient. So our garden this year I would love to get enough veggies to eliminate a lot of the grocery bill but I know I do not plan to do it large enough scale to completely eliminate it. My husband and I both work full time and our kids are young (all under age 5) so while they can help they are not going to handle a lot of the "hard" work.

We plan a pretty big garden and we'll can and freeze various things. A couple other space things to consider that will help the garden long term is composting space as well.

I believe space you need is really going to depend on exactly what you plan to plant. Like if you want to plant some of the crop that take a lot of space then that is going to play a big factor in what space you'll need.