I don’t grow tomatoes, but am related to people who do.
It ain’t about saving money, they just taste way better.
Have you seen how much tomatoes cost these days? On a good year I can get hundreds of dollars worth from 6 or 7 plants. Most of that gets turned into hundreds of dollars worth of frozen sauce.
Yeah, decent tomatoes here are like £3 for 250g. Last year I grew 55kg. This year not going so well but also I planted a lot less.
Grow what is suited to your environment and season then you won’t have to do much while providing way more than you can use. Grow something not ideal then yeah it’ll be a perpetual uphill battle.
Big grocery propaganda lol
5 Roma tomato plants and you got salsa for the year
You gain more than saving money when you take the time and learn to grow your own food.
Meh, I like tomatoes to taste like tomatoes.
I simply do not trust people who think the appeal or value of gardening is saving money or that local tomatoes are no different than mass shipped grocery store tomatoes.
I grow cayenne peppers to save money. One plant yields so many peppers that it’s legitimately profitable.
I do save money growing mint over buying it at the store, because mint is eternal. I’ve been making juleps and jelly out of the same mint plant for about 6 years now. But mostly I keep mint around because I like it.
Tomatoes? It’s not really about the money, it’s that grocery store tomatoes are designed for durability rather than flavor.
Money is not the reason why I plant tomatoes.
If I could I would buy them, but you can’t buy the flavor when they ship it green over the half the continent.
Buying locally could work, but the business doesn’t work because it would be expensive and most people would not pay more for local food.
Buying locally could work, but the business doesn’t work because it would be expensive and most people would not pay more for local food.
Do you mean specific to your location? I just paid $1.70 /lb for 60lbs of tomatoes from a local organic farmer whereas the grocery story will sell them for closer to $0.60, and there is a wait list for the farmer! I’m not that picky about organic but these tomatoes are amazing.
I do grow some at home but we preserve all the tomato sauce we need for the year ourselves and we haven’t been able to grow that much…yet.
I picked my first peach from our first peach tree and the aroma was glorious. The taste of it was between giving up everything I own for a second one and meeting my wife for the first time.
Nothing beats growing your own food. Plus the little tomatoes, although I’m allergic, taste like berries.
I couldn’t afford to live where the peach trees survive the winter here lol. But I treat myself to a basket or two of Niagara’s finest each summer 🤤
The smell of fresh tomatoes is one of the best things though
I’m allergic. But it’s such a good fruit to grow and eat. Specially the tiny grape tomatoes.
Growing your own veggies, at least in most western countries, is seldom about saving money or food security.
Herbs are a massive saving if you cook.
To make one pot of some dishes you’re looking at $3-$6 of herbs from a grocery store (if they have them at all), when growing my own we’re talking pennies.
Just as important to me is flavor and convenience. My own stuff tastes like the real thing, and I know it’ll be there every day.
When I trim the herb monsters back, I give those trimmings to my neighbors since I can’t use all I grow.
Oh and I grow everything inside, in the old “TV space” (since it’s useless anymore) using self-contained little hydroponic setup (Aerogarden knockoff).
I grow an entire wall of basil. Not even exaggerating. It’s an 8’ long row with about 15 plants of different varieties, which get 3-4 feet tall. By the end of summer I’m clipping a whole pound per week just to keep them from flowering. I give away gallons of pesto for thanksgiving and Christmas. If I cared I could probably make legitimately a couple thousand dollars at the farmers market if I wanted to.
It’s a completely different food from the canned pesto you get at the store. It’s actually kind of funny because on the day I process the basil, the pesto will taste bland because I’m just so saturated by basil scent. But the next day it’s like nothing I’ve had from any can or even any restaurant, and that flavor lasts for months frozen.
Yeah, although I do focus on things that are worth more. That can also just be something that shops don’t usually stock too.
$2.17 pfft.
Pack of 50 good tomato seeds: $3.50. Bag of manure: $10. String for tying up the plants: $2. Sticks to tie them up to: found in the yard. Water: no idea. Plant 30 seeds, get 20 plants big enough to transplant. Grow a pithy 5lbs of tomatoes from each plant in your first year because you don’t know what you’re doing. 100lbs tomatoes, would be $5/lb at the store (and don’t taste as good), $500 - $15.50 = $485 savings, less water costs.
Same set up in the next year, less seed costs (you kept yours right?), $50 in steel pipe to trellis the tomatoes to, few hours of YouTube University, and look at that, twice the yield. Now you have to buy some ball jars and a pressure canner ($100). $1000 - $162 = Still $838 ahead. And you now have fresh jarred tomatoes for the whole year.
I can easily clear 20 or 30 pounds per plant depending on the variety without trying too hard.
Yeah, this person has obviously never grown tomatoes. Most people end up with so many they give them to anyone who will take them.
It’s also super easy to rig up an auto watering system. I’m about to implement one on our lemon tree that keeps almost dying (I don’t neglect it; I’m the one who saves it), using a soil moisture probe and a solenoid valve. It’s like $40 in parts, including tubing.
What soil moisture probe are you using? Most are kinda useless I figured out, as they don’t measure the water volume in the soil.
I got the XH-M214
Do yoy have a tutorial for the watering system?
The Millennial Gardener has a good tutorial for drip irrigation (can be automated or manual turn on/off) on YouTube. If you can’t find it let me know
Why pressure can tomatoes?
Botulism.
And I don’t have enough space in my freezer for as many jars of sauce I make every year. I need them to be shelf stable, and that requires canning, and pressure canning is faster and more consistent than deep water bath canning.
Okay, thanks. I’m not trying to tell you what to do of course, I was just curious about the choice to pressure over water bath.
The hold time is faster at pressure for sure, but I wish pressure canning was faster than water bath over all! I think my limitation is my glass top stove. The canner I have specifies it can be used on glass top but it takes forever to get to pressure. Water bath canning gets done outdoors with a large propane burner and that gets rolling fast lol.
I suppose that depends on the amount of tomatoes you’re growing.
You’ve never bought a tomato in a grocery store half as flavorful as the Cherokee purples I grow.
This is it for me. When the tomato gets ripe right there in front of you, the taste ruins all other tomatoes forever.
Same with strawberries. Why even bother buying some little red water crunches in December? Buy the real ones from farmers market that taste like real strawberries. Embrace seasonality. Don’t live in some Boomer fantasy where the shape of the water crunchies available in January means we beat the Soviets.
I didn’t do it to save money. In fact growing my own tomatoes and chili’s cost more that it saved.
I grew chili’s inside a greenhouse with growlights and outside to test the difference. Inside the greenhouse was over 30C every day and they had 10h of light per day while outside was much more variable and lower on average.
The ones from the greenhouse were so spicy that I could barely eat them.
It was a fun project and I’ll definitely do it again.
Checkout Aerogarden and their knockoffs. So idiot proof and self-contained.
I have a brown thumb and these things make me look like an expert.
