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[–] 59 points 2 months ago (13 children)

$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.

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  • [–] 38 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (2 children)

    Yeah, this person has obviously never grown tomatoes. Most people end up with so many they give them to anyone who will take them.

    It's also super easy to rig up an auto watering system. I'm about to implement one on our lemon tree that keeps almost dying (I don't neglect it; I'm the one who saves it), using a soil moisture probe and a solenoid valve. It's like $40 in parts, including tubing.

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  • [–] 1 point 2 months ago (7 children)
  • [–] 4 points 2 months ago (6 children)

    Botulism.

    And I don't have enough space in my freezer for as many jars of sauce I make every year. I need them to be shelf stable, and that requires canning, and pressure canning is faster and more consistent than deep water bath canning.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 months ago (5 children)

    Okay, thanks. I'm not trying to tell you what to do of course, I was just curious about the choice to pressure over water bath.

    The hold time is faster at pressure for sure, but I wish pressure canning was faster than water bath over all! I think my limitation is my glass top stove. The canner I have specifies it can be used on glass top but it takes forever to get to pressure. Water bath canning gets done outdoors with a large propane burner and that gets rolling fast lol.

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