• HiddenLayer5@lemmy.mlEnglish
      374·
      11 个月前

      Also one of the easier garden vegetables (yes, vegetable, fight me) to plant. Great for beginners.

        • SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca
          17·
          11 个月前

          Serious question: do people on team fruit also call other “culinary vegetables” fruits, such as cucumbers, zucchini, corn, eggplants, bell peppers, green beans, etc.?

          • C_Leviathan@sh.itjust.works
            3·
            11 个月前

            I don’t mind calling all of those things fruit. It seems people get really weird about making savoury meals out of fruit. Like I know a tomato is a fruit, I put tomato on pizza, I never once while making pizza have a thought about whether a vegetable or a fruit is going on my pizza. It’s just a tomato, it can swing both ways.

            • SkepticalButOpenMinded@lemmy.ca
              1·
              11 个月前

              I prefer polysemy. There is a very useful category of “edible plants typically used in savory dishes”. Imagine someone being upset with you because you brought green beans when they asked for a side of vegetables.

              I don’t see the point in taking the botanical definition of fruit and pretending it’s useful in the culinary world.

          • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
            511·
            11 个月前

            Depends on context? If I’m talking about the fruit on the plant, yes. If it’s in my kitchen, no, that’d be silly 🙄

      • Squirrel@thelemmy.clubEnglish
        3·
        11 个月前

        Fruits come from the flowering part of the plant and contain seeds, whereas vegetables are other parts of the plant (leaves, stems, roots, bulbs). They’re fruit.

        • NotSpez@lemm.ee
          6·
          11 个月前

          They say knowledge is knowing that tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is knowing not to put it in a fruit salad.

        • HiddenLayer5@lemmy.mlEnglish
          3·
          11 个月前

          But that’s not mutually exclusive with vegetables. Vegetable is not a botanical designation. Whether it’s a vegetable or not depends on how it’s typically used in cooking. Cucumbers, zuccini, and green beans all fall into the same category of being both.

  • Ben Hur Horse Race@lemm.ee
    1311·
    11 个月前

    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.

  • ABotelho@lemmy.ca
    1221·
    11 个月前

    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.

    • Gameboy Homeboy @lemmy.world
      48·
      11 个月前

      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.

      • buffaloboobs@lemmy.world
        211·
        11 个月前

        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.

    • Aux@lemmy.world
      9·
      11 个月前

      Depends on where you live. If you live in Italy, you can just throw random shit around your house and a couple of months later you will crap loads of free food!

    • BCsven@lemmy.ca
      3·
      11 个月前

      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.

      • ABotelho@lemmy.ca
        2·
        11 个月前

        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.

        • BCsven@lemmy.ca
          2·
          11 个月前

          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

      • jimmydoreisalefty@lemmus.org
        1·
        11 个月前

        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.

  • coheedcollapse@lemmy.world
    81·
    11 个月前

    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.

      • dominotheoryEnglish
        6·
        11 个月前

        It’s the same in that most fruits and vegetables you can buy at the store have been bred for quantity and shipping. Home gardeners can grow varieties that are bred for flavor. So my Nebraska Wedding Tomatoes may not survive a trip across the country with UPS, but they taste amazing. And my Double Gold raspberries don’t produce bushels, but they’re the best I’ve ever eaten. I do think I’m probably saving money growing garlic. Very low maintenance plant, and I grow enough to save what I need to plant for the next year. So some crops are pretty cost effective, but some are really for the flavor.

      • BCsven@lemmy.ca
        1·
        11 个月前

        More noticeable in Tomatoes, but everything is more flavourful. Potatoes are more Potatoey, leafy greens are more intense flavour, some people finding home grown romaine too strongly flavoured because they are used to it tasting like nothing

      • LinuxSBC@lemm.ee
        1·
        11 个月前

        Not all, but most. I don’t notice much of a difference with peppers or carrots, but strawberries especially are incredible when grown from a garden and pretty tasteless when bought from a store. Tomatoes don’t have quite as significant of a difference, but they’re still much better. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten fresh beets from anywhere but a farmer’s market or my garden, so I’m not sure about them.

  • Gamey@feddit.rocks
    731·
    11 个月前

    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! ;)

    • Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca
      19·
      11 个月前

      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.

      • buffaloboobs@lemmy.world
        203·
        11 个月前

        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

        • PvtGetSum@lemm.ee
          5·
          11 个月前

          As a vegetable farmer I disagree. Tomatoes do not store well like potatoes, please throw them in your fridge.

            • PvtGetSum@lemm.ee
              2·
              11 个月前

              So of course tomatoes eaten directly off the plant are gonna be “superior” (I personally prefer them a bit cold but that’s just preference), storing tomatoes like potatoes or onions is just completely incorrect if mostly because when you tell people to do that, they’re gonna immediately go to stick them under their sink. While potatoes and onions do well in cool dry storage, they still have a resistance to temperatures above what anyone should be storing tomatoes at.

              While it’s correct to state that tomatoes shouldn’t be stored at temperatures below 40°F, saying “don’t refrigerate tomatoes” is complete BS. Most refrigerators aren’t cooling down to the 30 range, and even if they are your tomato is still gonna do better there than in is on your shelf if you’re trying to keep it for a longer period of time.

              That being said, if you have a tomato that you want to ripen a bit, store it out of the fridge on your counter, it will help it out a bit. But as for a ripe tomato? Keep it in your fridge. We pick hundreds of pounds of tomatoes a week at my farm, most of them are sold only a day or two after picking at our farm stand, but we still have to refrigerate them over night because if we don’t, they will turn to shit, and no one is gonna pay to eat a shitty tomato that’s been festering overnight during a hot summer, especially if you live in a humid area. Potatoes and onions on the other we leave out overnight and they do fine for days without any discernable difference.

              Refrigerate your tomatoes, keep your fridge set to a reasonable temp (40-44°F), do not treat your tomatoes like onions or potatoes.

        • Gamey@feddit.rocks
          4·
          11 个月前

          Or in other words in the fridge if you live in a “modern” house because there won’t be any better place?

          • buffaloboobs@lemmy.world
            24·
            11 个月前

            What do you mean? Normal fridge temps are too cold for things like tomatoes, potatoes, eggplant, basil, etc.

            I’m talking about a cool garage, basement, a root cellar. Somewhere cooler, so that the ripening process is slowed down to increase shelf life, but not so cold that they get shitty and mushy and gross.

            • Aux@lemmy.world
              7·
              11 个月前

              The coldest part of my house right now is +22C. I’ll stick to the fridge.

            • Gamey@feddit.rocks
              31·
              11 个月前

              I know but about half of the many houses I lived in didn’t have anything like that, I just want a old earth cellar to store stuff but that’s luxery by now.

        • Gamey@feddit.rocks
          1·
          11 个月前

          Mine are on the balkony because I don’t have a garden this year, shitty but at least there is less competition if I leave them, well if you would leave any of them even long enough to ripe properly that is!

    • BCsven@lemmy.ca
      3·
      11 个月前

      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

      • Gamey@feddit.rocks
        2·
        11 个月前

        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)

  • SIGSEGV@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    56·
    11 个月前

    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.

    • Mr_Blott@lemmy.world
      24·
      11 个月前

      Try making a pizza sauce from homegrown tomato and you find out why a Marguerita pizza exists

    • theragu40@lemmy.world
      7·
      11 个月前

      Or you can be like me thinking I hated tomatoes, until I tried home grown ones finally and realized it isn’t tomatoes I hate it’s shitty mealy store bought tomatoes that I hate. And it turns out everyone actually hates those because they are shitty.

      • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
        5·
        11 个月前

        you hate beefsteak tomatoes. they’re grown to be large and red, to survive transport well, and to look good on grocery store shelves. if your job is to sell tomatoes that you’re not actually gonna eat, they’re perfect. If, however, you intend to eat tomatoes it’s hard to do worse than a beefsteak. Mealy, flavorless, hard to cut, generally difficult.

        What you want are plum, roma or campari tomatoes. The smaller dudes, and roast them a little bit before you use them if you can. We just started growing san marzanos instead of beefsteak varietals and the difference is night and day. Switching to them, I can finally taste the essential flavor elements of a good marinara sauce.

    • DragonAce@lemmy.ml
      61·
      11 个月前

      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.

    • Apock@lemmy.world
      2·
      11 个月前

      We got our very first raspberries this year and Oh. My. God! They are so much better!

    • LinuxSBC@lemm.ee
      2·
      11 个月前

      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.

    • OneOrTheOtherDontAskMe@lemmy.world
      22·
      11 个月前

      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.

      • ChronosWing@lemmy.zip
        English
        2·
        11 个月前

        Grocery stores sell vine ripened tomatoes. They tend to also sell locally grown ones from local farmers which taste just as good as the ones you can grow at home. Any other ones you should just steer clear of for the reasons you listed.

  • cizra@lemm.ee
    391·
    11 个月前

    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.

    • Alien Nathan Edward@lemm.ee
      6·
      11 个月前

      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.

      • SomeAmateur@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
        21·
        11 个月前

        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.

      • jimmydoreisalefty@lemmus.org
        1·
        11 个月前

        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.

  • downpunxx@kbin.social
    35·
    11 个月前

    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

    • whatisallthis@lemm.ee
      192·
      11 个月前

      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.

    • BCsven@lemmy.ca
      5·
      11 个月前

      Healthier too since the plant actually did its proper growing cycle and converted nitrogens into protiens

  • Dubious_Fart@lemmy.mlEnglish
    261·
    11 个月前

    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.

      • Dubious_Fart@lemmy.mlEnglish
        91·
        11 个月前

        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.

        • Meowoem@sh.itjust.works
          1·
          11 个月前

          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.

    • oo1@kbin.social
      1·
      11 个月前

      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”

    • AnonStoleMyPants@sopuli.xyz
      7·
      11 个月前

      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.

      • Azzy@beehaw.org
        2·
        11 个月前

        What variety is it? Some are predisposed to having longer/shorter ripening times,

          • Azzy@beehaw.org
            1·
            11 个月前

            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

    • Koala@feddit.de
      5·
      11 个月前

      I learned you harvest zucchini before they get massive as the taste is inversely related to the size though

    • miss_brainfart@lemmy.ml
      2·
      11 个月前

      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