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.

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

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 🥹

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

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

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

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.

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

Because they buy the actual substance food at the store. Ignoring the macros, you're eating 80 tomatoes a day person to just keep up.

Building strong communities is like rule number one in serious pepper communities

Sometimes gardening is just a hobby, tho

We were meant to be rugged individuals, but rugged individuals living in a community with other rugged individuals.

Also, farming has always been a hard job. People who garden are doing the kinds of farming that farmers did before automation became a thing, but they're doing it on a tiny scale. One farmer using non-industrial methods is going to have to really work like a mule to keep just themselves and their family alive. So, gardening using those same methods is never going to produce enough calories and nutrients for anything meaningful.

all things considered, that's better than most plans I've heard.

Even potatoes don't have all that many calories.

If you WERE to try to prep your way to sustainable. you're going to have to buy/store starches in bulk and use the garden +canning for nutrients.

Aquaponics are the way. Simply buy property with a pond. Ez.

It took me weeks to finally grow like 4 strawberries. Was it worth it? No. Was it satisfying? Also no.

There's a farm store near me. When stuff hits actual season, you can walk over there a buy a 25lb box of peppers for $15. The rest of the year it hot house, which is still damn good, but nowhere near as cheap.

it's also cost you a lot of time

We didn't even grow zucchinis this year so many people have extra zucchinis.

So people who want to kill you for having to take all those zucchinis they didn't want

I think It always been like that in temperate climate.

Growing enough food to survive a year is the easy part, preserving it so you still have food to eat at the end of winter is the hardest and most time consuming part.

Poly tunnels can help grow small-scale crops well into the spring and fall. An earthen greenhouse can do so year round even in places where it gets to -40℃.

That's why I also have a slingshot

I think that last part is key, it's a good skill to have. It's easy to think it'll be everyone on their own when the apocalypse happens, but people generally want to work together if it means better chances of survival.

It's hard to imagine there wouldn't be tribes of people popping up across the wasteland