Fences

Water.

lol, Nitsua.

Electricity for lights, starter trays, pots.

What would be the minimum budget for starting growing tomatoes ?

seeds can be had practically free. ask your neighbor for their tomatoes rotting in the fridge.
cages can be made for practically free, a few sticks and coils of yarn.
fungicide can be made practically free.. little baking soda, dash of soap and a dash of canola/vegetable oil.
soil is dirt cheap, free if you go in the woods and dig up a few buckets of composted dirt.

most expensive thing is time to take care of them while they grow..

Ha Ha Nitsua.....the real important stuff!! Don't forget bacon and lettuce also!

I grow my tomatos in beds filled w compost made from junk mail and kitchen scraps. I save seeds and start them indoors in yogurt cups. I have been reusing the same tomato cages for years. Total investment per yr is a small bag of gardensoil to start seedlings. Keep it simple.

If I had to buy all my supplies:

Light - 4 bulb fluorescent... $50
Electricity... $5 - $10
Starter trays - 72 cell, with 2-3" domes (the cheap ones)... $20
Seeds - 3 varieties, 2 were 'on sale'... $10 rounded up for shipping
Pump mister... $15
Seed starter mix... $5
Transplant soil... $6
Pots... $10
Fertilizer... $10
Cages... $120

I may have missed a thing or 2...

The good thing is that most of this stuff is a one time investment, and I already had, repurposed, or scraped together the light, the mister, the pots, the fertilizer, and the cages.

Not paying me even sub minimum wage .lol
But my out of pocket expense ( having established the beds in previous season) has been about $150 for 50 tomato and 20 pepper plants (seeds, electricity, fertilizer, ..misc.).. I bought a total of 5 tomato and pepper plants ( out of 70). The rest I started from seeds.
To me it is a hobby (Mostly) that I get more enjoyment out of it than spend time and money. I would say, many folds.
Sey

Canning jars, lids/rings, water bath canner, pressure cooker, dehydrator, other ingredients needed to make Annie's Salsa...

IMO it's all darn well worth it! Don't start out all gang busters...start small and spend a little each season. You'll be using a lot of stuff over and over again. It's an investment. You'll learn, you'll grow, you'll have tomatoes.

Do not forget drip irrigation. It saves me A LOT of time and makes me feel free...

You forgot the fence. No point in investing hundreds and not building a fence. Between the groundhogs, deer, and other critters, my garden would get mowed to the ground without one.

Here in NY where I live, watering is so rarely necessary that investing in a drip irrigation isn't worthwhile IMHO.

Yes, I'm a HUGE fan of drip irrigation.

At the beginning will be a trial and error thing, but it's worth.

I was very happy with drip irrigation and fabric mulch.

I set up the timer and I fuhgeddaboudit.

Bigger house with basement to start all your plants. Basically it could run into hundreds of thousand of dollars.

Don't forget the hired help. And the tractor.

Hoosier :-)

Can't help agreeing with Sey that this is a drop in the bucket and if I counted my labor it would be cost prohibitive. For me there is no contest, it is land, and the lack of it. Land is not free. All of my expenses are severely inflated for to having too little of it, too. A distant #2 is this forum. Too many ideas from it. Like the $50 I just spent (like an idiot) on not even 50 seeds that I'll grow 5, if that many.

Wish someone would rent me an acre for a couple hundred bucks a year nearby...

PC

I remember reading vegetable gardening for dummies, it said the average gardener spends $60 and harvests so much stuff and saves all this money... I wonder if the writer had actually ever had a vegetable garden.

I think $60 is possible if you are already established. I spent about half of that this season. One bag of potting soil, 3 cherry tomatoes & about one month of indoor lighting. Next year i most likely will not even buy the bag of soil. Actually, my goal will be zero dollars next year.

It is possible sure... but that's some real skill to pull off, and for a smaller garden...

I mean, I guess you can include the buy it at Home Depot and throw it in the ground crowd in average, but they are not likely to have a good harvest.

I spent about $30 and have over 40 tomato plants growing :-)

I completely agree that my expenses are far below average.

goodground, tell me all of your secrets!!

I wouldn't mind spending lots of money on equipment as long as they're reusable.

If I do not count fence, drip irrigation, garden tools and canning equipment, then here are the expenses that I had this year. Actually I have quite a big vegetable garden so everything that I bought I also used for the other veggies. So I spend only a part of these money on tomatoes. One bag of seedling mix - 5$, one bag of good potting soil - 6$, seeds - 5$, one bag of dried chicken manure (fertilizer) - 10$, two bottles of liquid copper fungicide - 40$, two bottles of neem oil - 20$. Total: 86$. And some money for the two months of electricity use for the lamps. As you can see fungicides are hugely expensive (60$). Last year I did not use any and still had a lot of tomatoes, although the plants looked awful due to disease issues. This year is very wet so far, and I decided to use fungicides for the comparison.

antmary, how big are the "two bottles of liquid copper fungicide?"

I buy this Concentrated Copper for $ 16. It last for at least 1 month (4 times weekly.)

antmary, no fungicide last year? You give me hope.

In this forum there are some that use, and some that don't use fungicide.
I use it to PREVENT diseases. It's not 100% proof, but it's the best I can do.

Daniel, I also use copper concentrate, which is around 20$ for the bottle here. I am on the second bottle. I am spraying weekly this year and use the lowest dose of 1 ounce per gallon. Plus I add one ounce of neem oil in the mix. It is raining and raining, and when it is not raining we have the dew in the morning so I feel like the spraying does not help very much. My closest neighbor also has tomatoes in her garden and although she does not spray her tomatoes they look the same as mine so far. And I think all my neighbors think that I am crazy, constantly spraying staff on my trees and veggies. But this is the year when I finally decided to do it, so I'll stand to the end.

Shiitake, I did not spray my tomatoes for several years. Omaha has very good climate for growing tomatoes. We have dry and sunny and moderately hot summers. Tomatoes have their diseases but still grow and give good crop of tomatoes. Last year was wet and I still had more than enough tomatoes. I can tomatoes and I dry them and I give them away. But this year seems to be even more wet than the previous one so I decided to try spraying and to decide if it makes any difference. So far I can say that it adds A LOT to the cost of the growing tomatoes.

Indeed it does! That's why I opted to skip it unless I see fungus. Budget problems. It's been raining at night here then hot dry days. So maybe I am risking it but I will take the chances. (It's an experiment)

You are not supposed to spray copper every week. It is bad for the soil.

Peter, while obviously I respect your opinions, I would appreciate if you would provide links to sustain your statements. Thank you.

You need to add years, as an ingredient. Because once you have years behind you, you in principle have seeds, at least for OP varieties. Your soil is great, because you've been adding lots of compost (which of course you didn't buy!), and hardly need fertilizer. Cages last forever if they're made of metal.

Fungicides? I guess if you're desperate and unlucky.

So yes, starting out can be costly, but it's pretty cheap after that.

Apologies, opinion not fact. But I thought it was one of those garden rules not to spray the same thing every week all season long, especially something with documented potential detrimental soil effects. Always follow the label directions too...