Why so much interest in tomatoe, and peppers growing?

Friends. Please. I have no wish to ruffle any feathers. Why is there so much interest in tomato and peppers growing. Yes I know the old saying is, because it's there.

Having been linked with gardening and growin all sorts, especially in the veg line. Spuds, and the range of root veg. During my lifetime. These have been the main staple of our daily diet. Now with the availability of popping to the local super market. Here you have such a world-wide selection.
For instance. Some seed suppliers may have charged you 2.50 for a pkt of seed 25 seeds. You provide the growing medium, the TLC and finally you get rewarded with something resembling the real thing. You visit the supermarket and look, a pack of three peppers, red, green and yellow 75p

 

Quite simple Mike, the taste of home grown, freshly picked, sun ripened tomatoes far exceeds that of anything supermarkets can offer.

 

I completely agree with you Mike. I know some will say it is a labour of love ... costly love in my opinion, not only potting medium, fertilizer, greenhouse purchases, but also time constantly watering and tending to.

Agreed when you get the sun!

 

Yep, home grown, tasty tomatoes, the ones you can't buy in the shop, or they cost lots. Challenge to learn to grow proper crop. I'm doing my 2nd season in the greenhouse. Last year managed to overfeed them at the very beginning. This season better, but still not ideal

 

Sorry @Mike Allen , totally disagree. Home grown Tomatoes are nothing like the tasteless balls of water you buy in shops. And, as for cost wise I've never paid £2.50 for Tomato seeds, and bearing in mind 1 plant can cost 5/10p and you can get 100 fruit off it, well you work it out

 

The sweetest tomatoes I've ever tasted from a shop, Pink Temptation grown in Cheshire £1.50 for six. I've saved the seeds so hope they're not F1.
I won't buy Spanish or Netherlands, tough skin and bland,watery emptyness, not worth buying, even tinned are better.
Best for taste I've ever grown, Ailsa Craig and Ananas, try and buy them anywhere! Add that it's enjoyable to see the plants grow and a sense of achievement when they ripen. And they taste better.
I get that from turnips, beetroot, beans too, otherwise why bother with anything, just go to Sainsburys and plonk your money down.
Peppers, never had success but chillies are fun.
I know Mike, you get enjoyment from whatever you grow and you put this up for fun it's just horses for courses, innit, we're all different

 

My opinion on this. I do agree that to most people, home grown produce such as tomatoes or peppars do taste better than shop bought ones. Having said that, even if I did have a greenhouse, these would certainly not be grown in it.

My reasoning is simple. There are edibles that can be grown in greenhouses that are either expensive or difficult to buy or find in the shops, so why not grow these instead? As I have probably mentioned on here before, these expensive/difficult to find items are all I grow in my veggie plot, the only real exception being strawberries.

 

I didn't buy seeds for my tomatoes or peppers this year. All the seeds came from the ones i bought from a supermarket, they may not work out but so far, all is looking good. The compost is a different story though, I seem to have spent quite a bit of money on that but am looking forward to some home-grown tomatoes, peppers and potatoes this year fingers crossed :-)

 

I think gardening, particularly growing your own veg, can meet different needs for different people.

For some it's simply about learning or mastering the art. For some it's about growing things you can't buy. For some it's just the satisfaction of having done it yourself.

For me it's as simple as wanting to grow the things I already regularly eat. That's where I started with vegetable growing, and after ruling out things that seemed intimidating to a beginner, I ended up with a list that included bell peppers and cherry tomatoes.

It's also about freshness and personal satisfaction. I'm the only person in our house who eats salad, so it's not cost effective for me to buy the large packets from the supermarket that expire before I can finish them. But being able to wander into the garden and pick off a few tomatoes feels so very satisfying.

Next year I'm going to grow iceberg lettuce. Not because it's expensive or hard to find, but because when I fancy a caesar salad, or a bit of lettuce in my corned beef sandwich, I can go get the fresh ingredient without leaving the house, and feel proud that I grew it myself. The day I do that, wearing a dress I sewed and a cardigan I knitted, will be incredibly satisfying.

 

Costing? use homemade compost, feed with home grown feed (comfrey), save seed for next season, the only cost is your time and effort..... PLUS, you're reducing your carbon footprint by not driving to the supermarket but the biggest benefit is..... you wander off to the garden/greenhouse and get away from her/him indoors!

 

Perhaps things are fresher here. Must say Dutch tomatoes are tasteless but Portuguese ones are excellent. I don't like their cucumbers though as they are bitter. I am the only one who eats fruit and vegetables so I prefer choosing the few we buy. Besides, it would be difficult growing these things in our heat with virtually no rain. Situations are different for some.

Now I find that a sad state of affairs!

 

I wonder if there's a degree of "rate of return" at play as well; we've got a small space and all our veg growing is currently done in containers, so plants have to prove their "worth" one year to warrant a return the next. The volume of produce we get from the tomatos/chillis/cucumbers outstrips pretty much anything else in the same amount of space, so they're very satisfying plants to harvest. They're also relatively short-lived, so outside of June-October I can use the same space for other things.

 

A lot of people have voiced, at least in part, why we grow some of our fruit and veg.

For us, the important factors are Availability, Cost, Flavour and Variety.
For example, we don’t grow carrots, a relatively slow-developing crop, needing watering in our conditions, susceptible to pests, cheap and cheerful in the shops all year round.
We grow tomatoes, but only the baby tomatoes. One year we lost all 10 plants of Gardeners Delight to blight, getting less than 500g of them in total. The farmer in our valley grows in rotation, so This year we have A field of potatoes no more than 300m from the house -> we will probably have blight again. We grow “tumbling Tom” - and most of the harvest is in before blight strikes, and our old french Yellow Pear cordons, which seems resistant. The yellow pears Toms are grown from our own seed, and have come true for 10+ years now. The tumbling toms from seed bought at 50p from Wyevale, a pack lasting 3-4 years.
We grow our own beans (runner and french) and mangetout peas. The runners are rarely available here, and in a wet summer are prolific. The french taste better than shop-bought, we grow different varieties -eg purple, and can pick just a handful for a stir-fry/risotto/salad. Mangetout for the same convenience as the french - just a few at a time - and taste best when eaten within hours of picking.
We grow our own chillies, because of the variety, volume (we have a chilli jam recipe that needs 500g+ of chillies, for just 4 small jars!), and sheer fun of growing them. They crop heavily, and I’ve never seen a black chilli in the shops! We have grown sweet peppers, but only because the seed was free in a multipack. I would not go out of my way to grow them, in fact I didn’t sow them the following year. With no greenhouse, we only get 2-3 per plant, they are heavier on water than chillies, and not worth the effort for us.