They also taste way better than store-bought ones.
Seriously. They barely taste like the same 'fruit'.
Also one of the easier garden vegetables (yes, vegetable, fight me) to plant. Great for beginners.
It's a fruit, you donut.
Serious question: do people on team fruit also call other “culinary vegetables” fruits, such as cucumbers, zucchini, corn, eggplants, bell peppers, green beans, etc.?
And they stay fresh pretty much as long as you want them to.
Honestly, with my raised beds, between compost, seeds and fertilizer I probably lose money compared to buying tomatoes from the store. Home grown garden tomatoes are 10x better quality than grocery store tomatoes.
Honestly, with my raised beds, between compost, seeds and fertilizer I probably lose money compared to buying tomatoes from the store. Home grown garden tomatoes are 10x better quality than grocery store tomatoes.
Bro I been growing edamame. Holy fucking shit. You'll fucking cum.
And if ever there is a day you can’t buy tomatoes for whatever reason, you will have them.
Gardening is a hobby. You don't do it to get cheap fruits and veggies.
The results speak for themselves though, and you absolutely cannot beat a tomato right off the vine.
Store bought tomatoes seem to taste more fucking bland every year. Like I have to spend $6 per small bag to get "gourmet" tomatoes to even taste like a tomato. It's actually infuriating. I grow tomatoes now literally not to save money but just because grocery store tomatoes (at least in my area) are trash.
Store tomatoes are not tomatoes. Unless you're buying somewhere legit and expensive af, the tomatoes you see in stores are picked green and gassed to turn red. They are dog shit. Probably worse, actually. Seek out local farms near you and get the good shit (and often cheaper than places like whole foods).
Tomatoes are one thing I never buy in a store, except sauce/canned tomatoes, as those products are derived from ripe tomatoes.
A tomato straight from the vine is basically candy 🍅🤤
For real though, you don't plant your own tomatoes to save money, you plant your own tomatoes because your crop is going to taste so good that you'll be chasing that flavor any time you're stuck buying them from the store. Just so far beyond storebought.
It's the one crop I keep coming back to every year - the effort is worth it.
That's definitely from someone who never tasted a home grown tomatoe or waters theirs a lot too often, you can buy tomatoes but they taste like literal shit in comparison! ;)
Also you can leave them on the plant a lot longer than they last in the fridge.
So you save a lot more, since you aren't buying tomatoes every week. You just pick them as you need them.
Don't put tomatoes in the fridge, if possible. Put them in the sun, if they need to ripen more, otherwise put them somewhere dark and cool, but not cold.
Basically, store them like potatoes. 50-55F is ideal. They can stay for weeks like that.
(This is all said with the understanding that the tomatoes are whole/uncut. Once they're chopped up, the fridge is the best option, but they're only good for a few days)
sauce: me, veg farmer
Home-grown fruit, like tomatoes (and especially strawberries!) are, like, an entirely different fruit than store-bought. They are SO freaking good! It is like opening Pandora's Box, because you'll never enjoy store-bought again.
Try making a pizza sauce from homegrown tomato and you find out why a Marguerita pizza exists
Home grown taste like a real tomato, the super Market once taste mostly like water
It was only the other day I learned that the reason for this is mostly due to how they ripen, which I'm sure you already know.
For those that don't, when you pick a tomato from your garden, you've picked it at your desired color and freshness. When you buy a tomato from the supermarket (most if not all), you're buying a tomato that wasn't fully ripened on th vine, but instead is blasted with some ethylene, a naturally occurring gas that normally is produced by tomatoes actively ripening, causing the tomato to continue to mature but not develop some of the complexity of taste you get from proper vine ripening. They're often picked a little green when in super-farms because they're firmer and less prone to damaging that way, and then ripened during packaging. That, and the tomato you eat from supermarkets and fast food are all super homogenous and bred specifically for mass yield.
But they taste SOOOOOO much better than the flavorless ones from the store
But store-bought tomatoes are nearly tasteless...
This. I made pasta sauce with 100% produce I grew on my garden and it was by far the best I had ever tasted. Made about 2 jars and preserved the second one and was still amazing a couple of months later.
I agree with other comments here (about quality, cost of growing, availability, difficulties and especially with tomato varieties being optimized for convenient commercial farming, not taste.
I'm gardening for psychological safety, myself.
When I was a kid, Soviet Union collapsed, economy was in chaos, and though I never went hungry, fancier food (like meat) was unavailable commercially, so we raised it, grew our potatoes and basic veggies. It was a ton of work.
At the moment, stores are full of yummies. However, I can imagine them yummies disappearing - there was a brief food scare at the beginning of Covid (or whenever it was), then the Ukraine war started, scaring the whole Eastern Europe into thinking "Hey, my country is not too different from Ukraine - can we be next?"
Thus we bought a farm, last year, and started a basic garden. Last year we planted some basic foodstuffs - tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, garlic. Two kinds of mint for tea. They produced next to nothing, though. This year, it's more tomatoes, more cucumbers, potatoes, a selection of different herbs. The mints are perennial, and they're crazy weeds - you wouldn't be able to get rid of the beastly things if you wanted to. The yields are OK - I counted around 10 mid-sized potatoes grown from 1 large-sized potato planted, for something like 3x ROI (sample size: 1 plant, the rest keep growing). Tomatoes are sweet and tastier than anything.
You'll ask if it's worth the effort. Now I have a summer home (yet with a fiber optic network connection, yum!), for kids to run around in. I invest minor effort and minor funds (except for the farm, heh, hand tools are inexpensive), getting some food that I need to acquire anyway. Growing foodstuffs is linearly scalable. In the possible event of dung-ventilation, I'll have land, hand tools, and some basic proficiency in growing stuff. Thus it's like prepping, without really spending any money. Anything I buy will get used to grow food and recoups costs within the season. Oh, and I'm getting some badly needed exercise, spading my plant beds.
I don't have a plan for the case of zombie invasion (or hungry mobs spilling out of large cities), except being in the middle of nowhere. I'm hoping this scenario won't come to pass. If it does - the hypothetical robbed me won't be any worse off than a city dweller, either.
That reminds me - I should call my neighbor and order a tractor trailer full of bullshit (that's 15 tons, IIRC), costing 200€. I can pay now, get it here, and let it ripen for a couple of years.
Growing tomatoes is awesome once you have the right stakes & cages, but when end rot hits ya, and ruins your entire crop, months of watching those little buds grow, it will break your fucking heart
God damn. That would be like buying a new pet like a kitten or something and then a year later finding out you can’t eat it.
Most small gardens are not profitable. But it is therapeutic and the food tastes better.
1.33?
I can easily go through a tomato a day. The only thing limiting me is the cost. if I grew my own I would definitely go through at least 2 tomatoes a day.
Waste of time? You know, you can do other stuff while the tomatoes are growing. I have a job and a kid and a house and a social life. I also have some tomato plants. The latter doesn’t take away any time from the rest.
Or if you like gardening.
It'd potentially eventually pay for itself and save you a $1.33 or much more over a lifetime, but actually when you factor in all the costs of the gardening supplies and water and just all the associated costs with setting yourself up to grow them it's going to take a lot longer for you to save that $1.33. Hope you like tomatoes, you'll need to eat plenty to make it worthwhile.
It's not about the money!!
any tips for a beginner gardener? my tomatoes are always tiny, and how do i keep bugs from eating my leaves??
Honestly, might not be a popular opinion but I live in a big city and the amount of gardening-related local Facebook groups is insane. And since it's Facebook, it's all old people who have decades of experience with this shit. AND it's region specific so they are constantly throwing down relevant advice for the zone you live in. 10/10 it's literally the reason why I keep Facebook haha.
Too many people think growing shit also takes a lot of effort. Nah, literally just plant shit, weed once, then wait. You literally don't even have to water in most areas lol.
People think gardening or farming takes a lot of effort. It does if you want a pretty little area that's more eye pleasing. But if you just want food? Put seeds in. Wait. Food lol. Might not be the greatest harvest but any seed you'd buy at a store is hearty as fuck now.
Edit: Holy shit, yes guys. People on the internet live in the desert and even Antarctica too. My comment wasn't meant for you contrarian buttwipes lol. It was meant for anyone who doesn't live in a hellhole and has access to a little land lol. And even in those hellholes and places with shitty soil, it's just because you're trying to grow shit not meant for there lol.
the system depends on you only being able to do one thing effectively, and needing to pay other people to do all the things you need but can't do. When you do that, you have to go through several layers of government and corporate bureaucrats who all squeeze you for a little bit extra just because they've positioned themselves between you and what you need to live. To be self-sufficient is to cut all of these middlemen out from between you and the necessities of life. Gardening is a revolutionary act, it's propaganda of the deed writ small.
I’m tired of zombie tomatoes from supermarkets
