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.
Soybeans. You’ve been growing soybeans.
I think the person knows their own garden better than some rando lol
Edamame is soybeans.
Soybeans is edamame.
And Zendaya is Meechee.
Ive been telling people egg is egg for a long time https://i.pinimg.com/736x/f7/c5/f6/f7c5f6fa35da9a45e43ec4e1424bfb81.jpg
yeah? our light is very poor in our back garden. the only thing that thrives, that I’ve found, is gerkins, so thats what we grow. tiny cucumbers, and we pickle them.
we tried regular peas and beans, and it was OK, but there was so little fruit at one time we became completely confused as to how anyone could have enough for a whole serving at any one time.
Whats your light situation like with the edamame? do you just boil/salt them and eat them like you would in a japanese restaurant?
I should do that next year. Grow a bunch of stuff for the first time hydroponically this year and it has been fun. Even though the pruning gods would murder me if they saw my tomatoes.
Yeah but then what do I do with the leftover edamame?
And if ever there is a day you can’t buy tomatoes for whatever reason, you will have them.
we actually switched to gerkins. so, if theres ever a day where we can’t buy pickels, we’d have them, but not the pickling ingredients as we can’t grow our own vinegar
You can! You just need a vinegar mother! I’ve not done it myself, but the way I understand it you can transfer the mother once the vinegar is to your liking, then on to the next one.
I had a look and its like a red liver looking thing? I’m not sure I’m prepared for this
When gardens are being raided due to mass starvation, people will go to your house and say, “Pickles, GROSS!” They will move on and your house will be spared.
good thing I’m not growing cheeseburgers
What I would give for a cheeseburger tree.
Not to mention the cost of watering.
I live in Ireland, we don’t pay for water (or even waste water out like they do in Germany), but the rain has been non-stop this year with the gulf stream. I’ve also just intalled a water butt out of a 500l repurposed whiskey barrel (again, Ireland) so that also helps with not having to use the hose (they call it the hose pipe)
Collect the condensed water from the aircon.
Sure, but if you keep the same plot, over time that cost will average out.
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.
You can beat a tomato off in many ways 😏
We had 1/2 acre and planted a bunch of things, ate for free. Water was from a well so not even a water bill. Best tasting veg ever. Potatoes though, those are hard labour.
Can you grow all year round where you are? If I had half an acre where I live I think half of my growing area would have to be a greenhouse.
Where I live now we probably could, but land ia too expensive here. But land in Ontario was cheap and only for summer since winters were harsh
tell this to everyone giving advice to people in poverty
The best we can do is learn and inform, while being empathetic and understanding.
For those who can garden, great!
For those who can’t, might consider joining a community garden or help start one.
This is also not possible for everyone, but from my own experience, community garden communities do free lessons to help and teach new people.
Coming together around a common good, that is what we can do.
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.
Yeah, I started gardening several years ago and I’ve now got about 5 different varieties of tomatoes, they all taste unique and they all taste fucking amazing. But I will say, if someone isn’t into the idea of gardening, then I would agree its a waste of time.
I totally agree on strawberries. They’re really easy to grow (once they’re in place, they survive through winters and you actually have to stop them from spreading), and the berries are so good.
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.
I think the issue is they taste of nothing, and the flesh is all this mealy mush texture. People have a surprisingly low standard of what the accept as a tomato
Yea! Many evdn try to grow their own but water them too much and don’t taste the real difference because of that. I love tomatoes but the store bough ones really suck even in summer! (I get that they can’t taste all that ripe in winter)
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.
You can also make your own ketchup.
Yup, plus passata and puree. No such things as a tomato glut.
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.
absolutely this. I see so many people who look at the very real possibility of economic instability, even in the temporary case, and are sure that the three most important things to get through it are guns, guns and guns. Some of them, maybe, know a little first aid. So I’ve made it a thing for me to be the guy in the apocalypse that can do a little bit of everything else. Canning, winemaking, cheesemaking, all the other various ways that people have figured out how to preserve food, and basic gardening and herb lore. I’m networking with people who know how and what to forage, nurses who know what basic supplies would be needed to treat minor injuries and diseases and how they can be improvised with what’s to hand, and other like-minded people. Everyone is sure that in order to survive they’re gonna need to be self-sufficient rugged individualists and that it’s mostly gonna involve raiding and repelling raiders but if you look at times of uncertainty the people who actually survive know how to generate food and medicine from nothing and have small, tightly knit communities where they know and take care of one another. If your plan for economic uncertainty is just guns you’re gonna end up dead of a bacterial infection next to a pile of guns. If, however, you know how to make soap from fat and ash, and have a sensible number of guns with which to acquire animal fat, and can generate food from the dirt, you’re a lot more likely to actually do well. Economic uncertainty isn’t going to be an action film.
This “me and a pile of guns” mindset is slowly changing. Covid and civil unrest helped a lot of people from all walks of life start thinking about these things for the first time or with a needed dose of reality.
They are realizing that it’s not one person or one family with guns, but your larger community with larger needs. You all will have to obtain food, water, medical supplies etc. Like it or not guns, related gear and associated skills are an important piece of the puzzle, but not the entire puzzle. If your community is doing well, it will be a tempting target for all kinds of reasons. Remember that at the very best your usual first responders will be very slow to respond.
It won’t be fighting all the time, even full blown war involves a bunch of boredom. You’ll be doing the hard work taking care of your needs. You’ll probably have a pistol on you, and rifles+kit nearby to grab quickly if needed.
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.
“What message?”
“Oh it says ‘fuck farmers’ but it’s only visible from the air.”
It is more about independence and taking part in growing what you eat.
Some are more inclined and others do not have a inkling for it.
Nothing about the farmers. In fact, I would propose that our farmers need more independence from greedy companies and gov’t interference.
The farmers and community should have a bigger say on the matter. Instead of having bigger and bigger farms that are becoming just like big greedy corporations.
No fault to the farmers and the like, this is due to the muscle of corps./gov’t/lobbiest making things worse then they should.
Joining together, as common folk, against greed and the wealthy class should be our focus.
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My zucchini has been amazing! First time growing it and just a single plant but I’ve probably gotten like 8 large bois from it. Tomatoes seem suuuuper late, tons of berries but not even a hint of ripening.
What variety is it? Some are predisposed to having longer/shorter ripening times,
Zuckertraube. Yeah could be that, just noticed today that my Sweet Sturdy tomatoes have begun ripening, yay!
Oh congratulations! Zuckertraube does take a bit longer, but the result is super sweet and tiny tomatoes, perfect for salads! Sweet sturdy is good too as I’ve heard, though there are so many varieties that it’s hard to keep track of! :D
I learned you harvest zucchini before they get massive as the taste is inversely related to the size though
Try picking them young while they still have flowers, use them quickly.
Idk, I’ve mostly been quite successful with tomatoes. This year not so much, but then again, I planted the pumpkins too close, they gobbled up all the nutrients
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Fucker straight up made its way across my small greenhouse and out the door, so yeah, king of spacetaking.
Pumpkins probably make more sense if grown in the three sisters style.
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.
You sound like a weird tomato version of Gaston.
Tomatoes are good man.
Sliced and put in a sandwich.
Sliced and served cold with salt and pepper.
chopped on a taco, or in a salad/wrap.
Make into soup.
cooked down into sauce.
but not fried. Fried green tomatoes are shit and taste awful.
We had so many last year that we had to freeze a load, they’re actually really nice frozen - I liked freezing them whole and they make the coolest sound when you knock them into each other, then while frozen cut into wedges and eat. Really refreshing and great texture.
I think they’re meming that 4 that was their total yield from all the plants they were able over the 2 months.
if you were to grow your own you’d probably be limited by something - space , light, and soil quality, and weather (maybe)
that’s probably why you say “if”
I also get to avoid slave labor in the supply chain, so…
Where the fuck do you think people buy tomatos?
https://civileats.com/2016/10/25/did-slaves-produce-your-food-forced-labor/
Lots of stuff on your grocery store shelves was made by slaves hidden away in some other country that either doesn’t have the laws or doesn’t have the ability to enforce them. Do you like chocolate or coffee?
Sure, for some produce that is true, I am aware. But tomatoes? At least where I’m from they are either local or come from other EU countries (Spain, The Netherlands usually).
You don’t buy them from your local supermarket that has a live feed of the tomato slaves out in the fields toiling away? My favorite part is the button they added that lets you auto-whip them on command.
Growing weed saves a lot of money tbh
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.
My MO is much cheaper. I just throw produce waste into a corner of my back yard and see what starts growing. Right now I’ve got about 10 pumpkin plants taking off like crazy. A jalapeño plant too!
I do think that numbers here are much more complex than people give them credit for, firstly no gardener I know only grows six tomatoes and secondly there are added benefits which come from it being an active hobby plus various health benefits.
I think there are bonuses that are very hard to get elsewhere, making friends by sharing excess harvest for example - if you brought tomatoes and give a bag full to someone you barely know they’ll think you’re odd but give them a bag of ones you’ve grown and next time you see them they’ll tell you how nice whatever they cooked with it was and at some point they’ll probably give you a couple of courgettes or invite you to pick from their strawberies while they’re away.
It gives a real connection to reality and passing time too, watching your plants struggle from the soil, potting them up and helping them through the various stages of life until they’re fruiting and ready for harvest. Watching the weather, keeping track of how much it’s rained and when to plant different things or what to water and feed - it’s very grounding, especially learning to accept whatever comes because you can only do so much and the rest is out of your control.
I could go on but just one more thing, having excess fruit opens up so many possibilities that you’d never bother with otherwise, making pies and jams just to make use of them feels so good and it’s such a great way to discover new things - my dad made a recipe he found for courgette cake partly as a joke in a year they had a bumper harvest and now it’s everyone’s favourite cake.
Actually one more thing, I was away from home recently and had to buy things I’m used to picking, herbs are insane prices! And awfull quality. A widow box full of herbs saves about twenty dollars a month and that’s without even taking into account having a tub of coriander (cilantro) for mojitos.
any tips for a beginner gardener? my tomatoes are always tiny, and how do i keep bugs from eating my leaves??
Try cherry and grape tomatoes. I’ve grown cherry tomatoes for the past two years along with starting grape tomatoes this year and I’ve had much more success with them than larger varieties. I think they tend to be more disease resistant, more vigorous, more productive, and fruit matures more quickly.
Also try growing them in bags or raised beds where it’s kept away from the ground where pests can get at them easier. Another thing you can do is cover the soil around them with straw mulch in order to reduce soil splash onto the plant when it’s being watered–this can transmit diseases to the plant. Pick off all the bottom half foot of leaves or so on the plant when it’s big enough too to reduce soil splash hitting leaves.
I stopped growing grape tomatoes. They’re easy to grow but they’re an indeterminate variety, and since they grow so fast they require a lot of pruning. I found a determinate variety of cherry tomato that grows so sturdy that it could potentially stand on its own without any trellis or cage until it starts fruiting, not willing to test it though.
I built a trellis using T posts, electrical conduit, and PVC pipe and it has worked extremely well.
https://ladyleeshome.com/how-to-build-tomato-trellis-2/
It’s basically this. Takes some work and some money but it was well worth it to me. I will have this for years and it performs much better than cages.
And yes, indeterminate tomatoes require pruning but it’s well worth the trade-off to me to have tomatoes ripening all the time instead of all at once.
It’s so hard to know any specific advice but I’d say when you’re getting into gardening plant more than you need and try different things - ideally write on labels what you’re doing with that one, like try some in bigger pots, different soil, more light or shade, different pruning styles or planting times. It’s fun and a great way to get a feel for your plants, instead of thinking ‘oh this plant is rubbish’ try to come at it more like ‘oh that’s what happens to a tomato without enough light’
Also YouTube is full of great gardening videos, the lesson type ones get boring once you know what they’re going to say but watching people show you their garden and talk you though everything and how it’s been growing, what they’ve done too it and etc can be endlessly fascinating
You could look into: companion planting (some plants help or hinder others. Eg, basil and tomato are good friends); no-dig gardening (alongside having a good soil microbiome); green manure; sacrificial crops to lure pests away from your main crops; aspect and soil type.
Higher potassium and phosphates increase flower and fruit growth. Higher nitrogen increases leafy growth.
Don’t grow the same type of plant in the same patch every year.
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