Growing Your Own Tomatoes? You Need This Many Tomato Plants For A Years Supply

With the current food price increases and food shortages, many folks are growing more food for themselves to ensure they have the staple food items they need. There is a wide variety of estimates online about how many tomato plants you will need per person per year. Most online gardening plans say 4 plants per person. That number is much lower than what we get when we approach this question by estimating how many pounds of tomatoes we use in a year.
When we calculate it this way, the internet tells us that, for what we consume in a year, fresh and canned, we need to grow around 25 tomato plants per person.

How did we get to 25 plants a person? Well we went to our pantry at the end of our canning season and counted.

We had:
52 quart or 1L jars of stewed whole tomatoes at 2lbs of tomatoes each. (We can our tomatoes whole, it would be more tomatoes if we had that many jars of the same size of sauce.)
36 pint jars of salsa at 1 lb of tomatoes each
24 pint jars of ketchup and chili sauce at 1.5 lbs of tomatoes each
24 1/2 pint jars of tomato juice at 1/2 lb of tomatoes each
40 4oz jelly jars or 125ml jars of tomato paste or pizza sauce. (BONUS)

Saving all our seeds, skins, and cores from our canning yields a bonus of around 20 lbs of waste which we turn into the tomato paste, so this weight isn't included in the calculations.

That is just what can. But we also have about 12 weeks of fresh tomatoes available to us for sandwiches, fresh salsa, pasta, stir fries, and grilled whole tomatoes. So let’s say 5 lbs per week, or 60 lbs a year.

All that adds up to about 250 lbs of juicy, plump, ripe tomatoes a year for our family of 2 people eating on average 1-2 tomato based meals a week.

If you look online there is a very wide range of how many pounds of tomatoes you can get per plant, the lowest being around 5 lbs and the highest at 80 lbs! - I would like to see that tomato plant. The most common amount I found was 10 lbs per plant. Since we have a short growing season, I went with the lowest estimation at 5 lbs a plant. With a need of 250 lbs of tomatoes a year, we need 50 plants a year, or 25 per person.

It is safe to say we plant over 50 plants per person each year. Last year we planted around 120 plants including the hoop house, the raised bed, the garden plot, and potted plants. We started with at least 150 seedlings to get that many plants.

So we grow over 10 times as much as online garden plans tell us to plant, and more than twice what we should if we use the lowest estimate of 5lbs per plant. This does not add up. At a minimum we should be walking away with 600lbs of tomatoes, or enough to feed 25 people.

Man we suck.

So does that mean we waste over 350 lbs of tomatoes a year? Probably not. Do we waste the potential of 350lbs a year? That I can see. We could space our plants more and spend a lot more time weeding and pruning to optimize fruiting. We could have a better pest control system, and that includes fencing in all chickens and preventing our dog from her daily foraging trips.

We chose the lowest end because of our season length. We start our seeds inside in Feb/March, we grow 1/2 of our tomato plants in a hoop house which extends their season, but we still have a TON of green tomatoes at the end of the year when frost hits.

Then there is the tomatoes that rot on our plants. We do not harvest every day, like most people we are very busy, and grow many other food crops. We do not spend 10 hrs a day tickling our tomato plants. Instead, we tend to wait until there is a large enough quantity to batch process tomatoes at around 20-50 lbs per batch. That means we sometimes miss the optimal harvesting window for some tomatoes. We also do not have the space to freeze many tomatoes between canning days. Those rotten tomatoes aren’t completely wasted though; they become compost or chicken treats.

So what does this mean for you? Consider that what we are talking about is an annual supply of tomatoes for 2 people eating an average of 1 or 2 tomato based meals a week. If you are a family of 4, with a similar diet of tomato based meals, then you will need around 500 lbs of tomatoes a year.

If you start with a baseline of 2.5 lbs of harvestable tomatoes per plant like us, then you will need at least 200 tomato plants a year.
If you have a longer growing season, more room, and/or more time to put into gardening tomatoes, then maybe you want to use 5 or 10 lbs per plant like the internet says, meaning you will need 50 to 100 plants for a family of 4.

Even at 50 plants for a family of 4, your need will far exceed the common suggestion 4 plants per person, or 16 plants a year for your family.

Get out there and start planting!

#Wilderstead #canadianhomesteaders #growfood

[jonas]

This is the EXAMPLE of a Perfectly delivered video.
Everything was directly informational; no jibber-jabber. Just the right amount of background music.
Thank you for this information!

[ivahihopeful]

THANK YOU!!! I wish I had run into this three years ago when I first endeavored to produce enough tomatoes! This year I may actually forgo the U Pick Farm where we generally bring home at least eight five gallon buckets of tomatoes... plus, there’s what I grow. This year, I planted 160 plants! For 3 adults and a 4yo.

[jeremiahkyler]

We get similar results. 2 to 3 lb per plant zone 3 near Edmonton Alberta. I like how realistic you are !

[TheOldSwedesFarm]

Well done! We're really planting a LOT of tomatoes this season! I hope your estimate is correct! Cheers!

[jeffmartin]

Im with you on this I grow 75 to 100 each year for 2 of us and am able to share some as well, that 3 to5 plants must be for people who dont like tomatos...

[HickorycroftFarm]

Fantastic video! We love getting into the numbers and the nitty-gritty on what we grow and why. We are a family of 4 and last year we did 128 tomato plants... ended up with 720lbs of tomatoes, it was a crazy year. But it was potentially more then we needed but canned up they are not to be wasted. Keeping it simple is nice too.... growing more so you do not have to "worry" so much if you lose some. We operate like that too, on almost everything in the garden, by the end of the season it is a crazy jungle. Thanks for sharing 😃

[denislosieroutdoors]

Well thoughtout and researched video there eh! Makes me want to start planting... thanks for sharing

[The-Ancestral-Cucina]

Well done! What a brilliant video. So thorough! I’ve started 160 seeds thus far. Two more packages to start tomorrow.

[WildBill]

Thanks for the info, I liked and subbed! I finally got a piece of land and started seeds tonight. I started a variety of 12 tomato’s, 12 peppers, onions, herbs etc.

Afterwards I started wondering if I did too many, so I did some googling and came across your video. Now I’m thinking I may need more! 😅

[kated]

Very useful information, thank you! Gonna try 25 plants this year and see if I can handle it. I started gardening as a hobby a few years ago, but with the way grocery prices are rising in Canada? I think I really need to up my gardening game now!

[ianlang]

I’m doubling up on tomatoes this year! Planning to do 8
Super impressed by your guy’s gardening love the videos

[lostcreekcabin]

I agree that location /climate is a big factor in all our garden estimates . Have a great season my friends 🍅🍅😊

[PreppingWithSarge]

Outstanding! I have a much smaller garden to work with but any bit helps!

[MichelleTech]

Thanks for thinking through this, love it! I wish I had more space to grow more!

[DomDaBomb]

That summer footage. Oh man. This video will help us estimate how much we need to plant. I dont think we consume quote the amount of tomatoes you do but maybe that will change this year

[chickadeeacres]

I grow around 18 plants which makes all the tomato sauce I need for spaghetti, chili, pizzas and the odd tikka massala. I haven’t purchased canned tomato sauce or paste in over three years. I still buy ketchup but we don't use a lot.

[MiAnUAcres]

I’m planning on growing a lot this year!! Have you heard of the long keeper tomato? You can eat tomatoes from your garden in February! I saw another channel talk about them and found them…..

[greenthumbprepper]

So. What your saying is that, I need to grow more tomatoes…. I’m good with that!!👍😜

[willbarbour]

nice to see an Amanda math talk! what's the relative variance on yield compared to manitoba? are there any sources for time series on tomato yield to account for likely variance? how does this vary with latitude? or are there other factors such as variety or "good tomato spots" that are different trends in yields and/or consistent production on good/bad years that might suggest more suitable tomato picks for noobs.. "these tomatoes "suck" for yields compared to the high yield varieties but they're definately more noob friendly especially in the north and/or north side great lakes" etc. I wanna HEAR that's scary powerful math brain

[cydrych]

I have 17 plants between 5 varieties and I’ll be happy if I can get a few pints of salsa and a dozen quarts each of whole tomatoes and sauce. 😂 And I’m pretty sure that is wishful thinking since two of those plants are the little Whippersnapper tomatoes.