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.

Only in the first year. Be patient and stubborn and after a few years you will have learned enough about the needs of your plants to grow veggies more reliably and consistently.

I still buy the 'cheap crops' - potatoes, carrots and onions because I'm still not growing enough of these. Everything else, including fresh aromatic herbs every day, comes out of my garden - at the moment it's plenty of tomato and aubergine, cucumbers, courgette and green beans.

There's a good reason we've all outsourced farming

For today sure. What it mainly means is that next time the world does a thing you can definitely still have tomatoes.

Remember when covid started and suddenly the shelves were empty and people who didn't understand the importance of masks were fighting eachother over the last tin of beans?

That wont be you. You'll be chilling in your vegetable patch.

$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.

You’ve never bought a tomato in a grocery store half as flavorful as the Cherokee purples I grow.

It's the journey more than the destination. But stick with the journey long enough and you'll find yourself at some exceedingly tasty waystations.

I think part of the trick is more just growing what already grows well in your area. I have a cherry tomato plant that I didn’t buy seeds for—I just tossed a few old tomatoes in the garden and it popped up subsisting off excess water from the lawn sprinklers. These last couple of months I’ve been able to step out every morning and pick a few to go with my breakfast. I haven’t had to spray for bugs because the local lizards keep them clear. I think more passive gardens like that might be the way to go.

This is one of those where the act is more than the physical result.

Gardening keeps you outside, active, and in our day and age away from your screens.

Indeed in the US environment it also means you know the providence of your food and my guess is that your tomatoes don't grow up near a feedlot ending up with salmonella spillover and more.

And beyond that it allows you to stretch those inflating dollars and get more nutritious food than the ultra processed grocery cheap food provides.

But the ones in my garden taste better and landscaping is for idiots.