From the ground up
Eggplant & Tomatillo Skillet
From the Sowcial team
Sauté the onion and garlic, add cubed eggplant and chopped tomatillo, and cook until soft, finishing with fresh cilantro.
Your grow, raise, make checklist
Check off what you already have, then follow the guidance or find it from a nearby grower.
Grow
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0/3Household production plan
How much infrastructure would this recipe take?
These are rough annual estimates based on the grow guide's typical yields, and only cover ingredients you're growing. Anything set to buy is on your grow plan's shopping list instead. Use them for planning, then adjust for your climate, losses, preservation, and actual harvests. Toggle any crop to Hydro to plan it as a hydroponic setup instead of a soil bed.
Cilantro
1 garden bed
Based on 3 cup per year
6 cups per 16 sq ft bed · 16 sq ft each
Eggplant
1 garden bed
Based on 12 each per year
25 eggplants per 32 sq ft bed · 32 sq ft each
Garlic
1 garden bed
Based on 24 cloves per year
40 bulbs per 32 sq ft bed · 32 sq ft each
Onion
1 garden bed
Based on 12 each per year
50 onions per 32 sq ft bed · 32 sq ft each
Tomatillo
1 garden bed
Based on 72 each per year
25 lb per 32 sq ft bed · 32 sq ft each
Black pepper
1 vine
Based on 3 teaspoon per year
2 lb dried peppercorns per vine per year · 25 sq ft each
Chili powder
1 lb of dried chili peppers
Based on 12 teaspoon per year
0.7 lb of chili powder per lb of dried peppers
Olive oil
3 lb of olives
Based on 24 tablespoons per year
0.15 quarts of oil per lb of olives
Salt
1 gallon of seawater
Based on 6 teaspoon per year
0.25 lb of salt per gallon of seawater
Garden layout
What planting these beds could look like
Each square is roughly one square foot of a standard 4×8 ft bed. Planted squares are shaded; the rest is open soil in that bed. Known companion plants share the leftover space in a bed instead of each getting their own. Where a bed grows a single crop, we flag good companions to interplant (shown as dashed squares), and a small border planting of trap crops is tucked in wherever it can lure pests away from your real crops. Both are how you hold pests down without reaching for a pesticide.
Switch any crop above to Hydro and it moves down here into its own system recommendation instead of a soil bed — tailor it crop by crop to what you can actually grow, whether that's a yard full of beds or a porch with a couple of buckets.
Other growing setups
Grown outside a shared bed — logs, grow bags, and other specialty setups rather than garden-bed square footage.
🌱 Black Pepper
1 vine
Based on ~0.02 lb dried peppercorns a year
≈ 2 lb dried peppercorns per vine per year
🫒 Olive
1 tree
Based on ~2.5 lb of olives a year
≈ 40 lb of olives per mature tree per year
Bed 1 of 3
🤝 Companion planted — Cilantro's flowers attract the aphid predators that also patrol the peppers. Sweet peppers, hot peppers, and eggplant share the same pests, spacing, and care, so different varieties plant together as one block.
🐛 Trap crop — French marigold roots suppress root-knot nematodes, and the scent helps mask nearby crops from aphids and beetles.
100% of this 4×8 ft bed planted
Bed 2 of 3
🤝 Companion planted — Garlic's scent helps deter aphids and spider mites from tomatoes.
🐛 Trap crop — French marigold roots suppress root-knot nematodes, and the scent helps mask nearby crops from aphids and beetles. Aphids swarm nasturtium ahead of its neighbors, and its trailing habit keeps it tucked along the bed edge.
53% of this 4×8 ft bed planted
Bed 3 of 3
🤝 Interplant tomato and pepper — Onions help repel aphids and other pests that trouble tomatoes. Onions help repel aphids from peppers without competing for root space.
24% of this 4×8 ft bed planted · dashed squares are companions to slip in along the edges
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