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Comment by cdelsolar | Hacker News Reader

I always thought tomatoes were pretty good and then I had tomatoes in Europe.

I guess that means you had them in a Mediterranean country, because elsewhere in Europe they still are rather bland in my (northern European) opinion

Yes this is the key. Most of Europe is in the same boat. Eating produce in Greece however is astoundingly better. Italy was less consistent on this but still better.

Which leads me to wonder if its really the genetic choices or is it just something about the farming, nutritional rich soils, or transportation/timing?

Sunshine is the other big variable. Most fruit will only get sweet during ripening if it's receiving enough sunlight. This is why red grapes are seldom grown in northern latitudes - their dark skin blocks sunlight and prevents them from sweetening during ripening.

Is it really about sunlight and not heat though? Otherwise one would expect to see more sweet fruit coming from northern europe than is the case. Given the near absence of "night."

France is good for tomatoes too. I think it's definitely partly about local availability. But probably also a bit to do with cultural consumer choices too. France/Italy/Greece all have big food cultures in a way that isn't quite matched by northern European countries.

That said, it seems to be getting easier to get high quality vegetables (including tomatoes) here in the UK. It's not from a supermarket and you pay more, but it is available (maybe still not quite as good as other countries, but certainly much improved on the flavourless stuff).

France has great tomatoes, but a random tomato you buy on sale at the huge supermarkets aren't any better than anywhere else (in my experience).

In France, standard supermarket tomatoes are standard bad - but we see increasing availability of different species obviously taking genes from heirloom varieties... They taste great and consumers are beginning to understand that weird shapes and colours mean flavour.

> Which leads me to wonder if its really the genetic choices or is it just something about the farming, nutritional rich soils, or transportation/timing?

- the soil plays no great role in taste but is of course the farmer most precious resource. - the plant genetics is preponderant in taste. - the consumers and farmer genetics and culture are loosely related to the plant genetics. - the missing pieces, distribution and seed providers, are the most important pieces, deciding on prices, margins and on the characteristics necessary of the products to improve those.

Local products are always best. But I can’t grow exotic fruits in Paris.

Forget about local markets. Most of the tomatoes eaten in Central Europe came from the 'sea of plastic' in the Mediterranean Spain and Morocco. Cultured from dutch seeds selected to grow really fast. Is a combination of long travel, green picked and so-so cultivars breed for market.

It's also seasonal, and depending on the provenance (local/imported).

I live in Hungary and tomatoes are crap for 10 months a year, when they're generally imported from abroad and are obviously picked up unripe.

Then during the summer you can buy tasteful tomatoes for a while, sourced locally.

In Italy they're better on average, but you can also find tasteless dutch ones in supermarkets (again, picked up unripe).

Yeah, in Italy you have to buy the local varieties. Non-PDO/PGI (protected designation of origin/protected geographical indication) cherry tomatoes are going to be tasteless (and cheaper).

You can get good ones in supermarkets in the UK, you just have to spend more and know what you’re looking for.

Recently I tried Bull’s Heart, which were stupid expensive but delicious. But you can get San Marzano in a bunch of places, and various other plum and cherry varieties with good flavours.

It’s just the average “salad tomato” that tastes like crunchy water.

Anyone can grow a pot of heirloom tomatoes outside in the summertime and end up with tomatoes that blow everything at the supermarket out of the water, if you can manage the pests. You can get pretty great produce at certain farmers markets, too.

After shelling out ~$50-$100 for intitial setup, you too can harvest $5 worth of tomatoes! And as you say, if you can keep the pests free, but that also requires for money to add to that inital purchase.

The insect/worms/catepillars in my area are more vicious than rodent invasions. If you get catepillars, they can wipe out an entire plant in a day.

> you too can harvest $5 worth of tomatoes

Your attitude is the problem - DONT equate $5 of supermarket tomatoes with an equivalent weight of home grown tomatoes.

I go out of my way to buy “expensive” tomatoes, because I don’t think of good tomatoes as being cheap produce, but more like an expensive vegetable (although price is still seasonal).

My attitude? I love gardening and growing my own vegetables. It is a simple truth, and the numbers don't lie. It gives me pleasure and enjoyment to do it. So the "entertainment" factor alone is worth it.

At the end of the day for new people trying gardening, it can be a bit disappointning. To make it all 100% magical panacea without actual realization of monetary factors, you're not being honest with potential new growers.

$50-100 is way overestimated. You can grow tomatoes in inexpensive pots. Seedlings are inexpensive.

Maybe $15 total, plus water, time, and patience. The latter two of those can be expensive, but difficult to quantify.

Tomatoes get big. They need a decent sized pot. I would recommend a 12" pot, defintely no smaller than 10".[0] Dirt aint cheap. "Cheap as dirt" wasn't formed from shopping at garden centers with bagged dirt, and you don't need a truck load for container gardening.[1] Tomoatoes need up right supports like cages, etc.[2] Seedlings are cheap individually, but each one needs a container.[3]

[0] $10 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Pennington-12-in-Terra-Cotta-Cla...

[1] $5 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Miracle-Gro-Moisture-Control-8-q...

[2] $5 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Glamos-Wire-Products-54-in-Plant...

[3] $4 https://www.homedepot.com/p/Bonnie-Plants-19-3-oz-Early-Girl...

That's one plant, and we're at $25.

Well you're right that it doesn't scale down to single pots.

When I grew tomatoes in containers, I went for the 5-gal buckets from Lowes ($4), and bought soil in larger bags. Also your cage is more expensive than I recall paying.

On the plus side, most of those are one-time startup costs.

Our tomatoes are self-seeding at this point. We literally do nothing except pick them, and put away several dozen jars of sauce every year, from a couple neglected garden beds. It sounds like we have less trouble with pests here than you do though.

My original post said ~$50-$100 in initial setup, so you're not being fair to my original post. You need multiples of the things or similarly functioning things as posted. Yes, buying bigger bags of dirt is an option, or cheap plastic pots. If you're going to be doing this, you'll appreciate the clay pots as they don't bet brittle from UV exposure. I prefer clay as I just dislike plastic.

It's a typical reaction when suggestions that gardening can be more expensive than people realize. Yes, if you use the same pots, start taking seeds generationally, etc the price amortizes to near $0. That first year though can put a dent in a wallet. If you've been doing it for awhile, it's easy to forget.

We haven't even discussed getting into drip irrigation or similar. Each of the individual parts are cheap (tubing, sprayers/drippers, etc), but again it adds up with a timer etc.

To be abundantly clear, I'm not trying to dissuade anyone, but just giving realistic expectations. It's just like getting into Arduino and what not. The controller itself is cheap. The shields are cheap. Electronic components are cheap. Then you add up all your receipts and realize, you've spent more money than originally anticipated. It's just the nature of DIY.

Well to be fair to my unfairness to your original post, you'll also get a lot more than $5 of produce out of a single pot.

So, per pot, you'll spend $20 in the first year by my (updated) math, then $5-10 each successive year -- and you'll get about $15 of produce each season. Sometimes much more than $15. Cherry/grape tomatoes are expensive, and the plants are more fruitful than the larger varieties.

Drip irrigation is out of scope. A minute or two, per container, per day, with a hose (or watering can) while you check for hornworms is the operational expectation.

Anyway I don't disagree with your larger point. Little things definitely add up. I've been to IKEA!

I also dislike plastic, but I liked the form factor of the bucket (straight vertical sides) to pack multiples into a small space. I still have the buckets 15 years later, and I use them for all sorts of misc jobs around the garden.

Need to add a fence to your list or a large enough garden to withstand losses.

This was our first garden year. Very small plot, around 6'x6'. Deer knocked over our two tomato plants and ate every tomato off. Huge green tomatoes.

True. If it's not the deer (rural, suburban), it's the rats (urban).

Container gardening on a (south-facing) high rise balcony works pretty well, though.

You can reuse most of those things for years, you can also use common household items to improvise replacements for cages and such. We bought little plants this year for 3 bucks each, we had no expenses otherwise.

There do exist these things called "dwarf tomatoes". Also, a large pot and a few good cherry tomato seeds can blow away everything in a supermarket with little flavor bombs.

I have determinate dwarf tomato plants (3 feet tall max), which I grew from seed ($2.99), planted in old milk crates (free) lined with plastic from old bags (free) and filled from one huge bag of potting mix (~$20-30), and this gives me half a dozen plants that are superior to anything in a supermarket. I staked them with tree branches trimmed from my trees (free).

I have grown them in the actual ground many years, eliminating the cost of the potting mix, but after a few years, you need to let the soil lie fallow to avoid blights, so this year it's the milk crate planters.

I just tossed some seeds in the dirt on the side, and now I have a giant tomato plant like 3' high.. pretty cheap unless you're in an apartment I guess.

It has to be less, surely. I remember growing tomatoes in the garden as a nine year old pretty much from seeds and just in the soil.

Perhaps a regional thing.

Where the 'European' ones better or worse?

As a norther European, I've always found the tomatoes in the US far better than what I normally get.

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