I grow tomatoes because they taste infinitely better than what you can buy.

Yes, I end up with more tomatoes than I can consume. For about one month. For about 8 months of the year if I want fresh tomatoes I have to buy them still.

How large is your garden mate? Or alternatively how bad are you at giving produce away? My grandparents have quite a large garden and have never had issues with too much stuff

That's true, but it's also nowhere near enough to live on.

They get a huge batch of something all at once, and then it's a scramble to eat it, give it away, pickle it, can it, etc. But, the total number of calories produced throughout the season isn't enough to even keep one person alive.

I feel so seen. I ended up making pizza sauce with all of my tomatoes. I would have homemade pizza about once or twice a month, and that is after using as many tomatoes as I could for sandwiches. In my experience, I would say 3 plants is just before the threshold of "too many".

Timing is hard. They product like mad in a very short window.

Canning is a layer of hell.

Freeze dryers are slow, expensive and consume a lot of electricity.

If I had the time/space, I'd stagger my planting, start it indoors, start another batch on time and another late.

I live in a town house but I don't actually have a grassy backyard, just a small shared deck. I've filled it with as many planter boxes as I can but last year I was only able to get two tomatoes to grow and both were stolen by squirrels 🥹

Lol yeah, I have dozens of tomatoes sitting out there on the vine right now because we can't eat them fast enough.

sure but you don't have tomatoes all year, only a short time, even if you bottle some.

Being self reliant is mostly impossible if you cant also hunt and forage No ones growing their own wheat for example to make their own bread, let alone collecting the salt they need as well.

we lived off grid for a decade with a massive garden, chickens, ducks, heaps of fruit trees, made our own compost etc

It's a weird split. I've tried to have a garden and would get like five fruits.

i would go for herbs and spices instead maybe that would be worth the effort

I can't get anything to grow because the dumb animals keepnwating everything, despite my efforts.

I was about to say. Everyone I've ever known who grew tomatoes always had significantly more than they could personally use.

My mom fills an upright freezer with salsa and tomato sauce from like 5 plants each year.