Growing Your Own Tomatoes – The Pros and Cons of Seeds

Totally missed my 100th post. I'm a centenarian now! :)

Growing your own veg is a brilliant thing to do. You save money, reduce waste and food miles, and it is immensely rewarding too!

Tomatoes are a favourite of many gardeners because they are fairly simple to grow (light + warmth + water + fertiliser = yummy tomatoes), but in my family at least there is a big debate over whether to grow the plants from seeds or pick up young plants from the garden centre.

The PROS of growing from seed

Cost – The obvious benefit of growing tomatoes (and most plants) from seed is that they are MUCH cheaper. Most seed packets (around 50 seeds) retail for around £1 to £1.50, whereas small plants in my local garden centre were 85p each. Even if you buy top quality seeds (F1 hybrids that are pretty much guaranteed to germinate, survive and produce a lot of fruit) for £3 a packet, you will get 15-20 good plants that will produce a lot of fruit.

Greater selection – If you look in a garden centre, they will probably be selling one variety of regular tomato plant and maybe a cherry tomato variety. In contrast, there are 5+ varieties of tomato seeds in my local garden centre. If you look online you will be truly spoilt for choice, with a massive array of seeds available for £1 plus a few pence postage.

Sense of pride – I love the excitement of seeing the first little seedling poking up through the soil. If you raise a plant from germination to fruition you get far more of a sense of pride than planting a tomato from the shop and collecting the fruits later on.

The CONS of growing from seed

Need a propagator – I said that tomatoes were fairly easy to grow, but they are quite fussy blighters. The seeds will not germinate if they don't get the conditions they like. They need to be kept at ~20°C, which at this time of year means that you will probably need a propagator. They also like to be not too wet, not too dry, with lots of light once the seedlings are up.

More susceptible to disease – Tomatoes are susceptible to “damping off”, a generic term for fungal rot which can affect both seeds and young seedlings. You can prevent this by storing seeds in dry conditions until ready to plant and by not over-watering them once planted. You should also ensure seedlings get a lot of light and the air is not excessively humid.

Require fairly constant care – Seedlings generally require a lot more looking after because they are not yet established. This means you will need to check if they need watering every 1-2 days and make sure you move them to a warm location if it will be really cold overnight. You also have to keep an eye out for disease because they are growing at such close proximity to each other and it will spread quickly through the young plants.

Do you prefer growing your tomatoes from a stock plant or from seed? Anyone tried both methods and can compare their yields from the two? For now I'll just watch my tiny seedlings grow in the window. :)

Cheap meals: Tasty Lentil Salad (Vegetarian)

When I was about seven years old there was a sale on baked beans at our local supermarket. A can of beans cost just 3p with a maximum of 4 cans per customer. My parents took my (even younger) sister and I along so that in total we could buy 16 cans of beans for 48p. We were pretty poor and had beans for most meals in a variety of different ways. I got so sick of them that I hated baked beans for a good five years or so after that!

Whilst it is possible to live on the absolute cheapest food available, you can rapidly get bored of it. My object is to find a variety of meals that cost less than £1 per person (or portion) to cook, hopefully with leftovers that can be taken to work the next day.

My recipe for lentil salad comes in at £2.92 for four portions, or 73p each. It is a variation on this recipe using cheaper ingredients, no coriander (because I hate it) and increasing the garlic (because I love it).

I am also concerned about nutrition. According to Calorie Count's recipe analyser, one serving contains:

So it's pretty healthy. It's also easy to cook! Look:

Tasty Lentil Salad (serves four)

250g green lentils (aka Lentilles vertes) – 500g bag costs 92p

4 tomatoes – six cost 69p (Lidl)

1 red onion – 20p

100g salad cheese (if you're not worried about the high saturated fat and sodium you could add more) – 50p for 200g

Juice of 1 lemon – 35p

4 cloves of garlic – 26p

1.5 tsp oil (I used olive oil).

1. Rinse the lentils thoroughly before adding them to a pan of boiling water. They don't require much stirring but don't let the water boil down. Burned lentils smell SOOOO BAD! These need to simmer for 40 minutes.
2. Whilst the lentils are cooking, roughly chop the tomatoes and cut the cheese into cubes (approximately 1cm x 1cm). Put these to one side for later.
3. Chop the red onion in half and slice it. Crush the garlic cloves.
4. When the lentils have been cooking for about 25 minutes heat the oil in a frying pan on a medium heat. Fry the onion for approximately 5 minutes then add the garlic and fry for another 5, stirring regularly to prevent the garlic burning.
5. Drain the lentils once cooked and mix in the garlic, onions and lemon juice. Plate it up and then add the tomatoes and cheese to the top. 
   
   
   (Totally forgot to take a photo of the finished product! Blogging fail! :D)

Depending on how hungry you are, you could add some pita bread to the meal too. (55p for six wholemeal pita in Tesco, or 18p for six Tesco Value white pita breads).

Let me know what you think if you make this! :)