[JustaDumbBlonde]

I have been kinda quizzing folks in my area that are putting in gardens to determine their reasons for doing so. In the group aged 65 or older, they've always done it and don't know any other way. In the younger folks, I've been quite surprised that cost is not the driving force, it is the food contamination stories that got them fired-up.

In the above article the mother says it is so nice to want a tomato and go out back and pick one, which of course is true. What lots of folks don't take into account in the further savings of not hopping into the car and driving to the market/store to buy a tomato.

Most of us know how many times we've gone to purchase a tomatoe, potatoes, carrots or that other side dish for supper that night. How many times have we run to the market to put together that salad? Not to mention how many times we will buy something else that we would not have had we not gone to get the lettuce. The savings really add up.

[Ciexyz]

I grow tomatoes in pots on my patio. If you grow enough of them, you'll only lose a small percentage to the critters and deer. (They have to eat, too.)