Is a garden really worth all that work?

Chances are you've probably asked yourself that question before. Even though the hardest part of my garden is the math, I wondered if it was worth it to get one decent sized tomato every few days from my four plants. This past winter I got the answer I was looking for. Winter? Yes, winter.

Remember this post where I share a very easy way to preserve tomatoes? The beauty of freezing them is that you can freeze one at a time. Unless you have LOTS of tomato plants you aren't going to have enough ripe at once to preserve them using traditional canning methods. All winter long instead of buying expensive organic tomato puree or diced tomatoes for our chili and our stews we added tomatoes from the freezer. It was pretty easy to guess based on the size of the tomatoes how many it would take to replace how many ounces of canned tomatoes each recipe called for. They were still mostly frozen when they were plopped into the crock pot but every time they cooked down into the perfect consistency.

Saving $3-$6 every time we make stew or chili? That really adds up in BearCountry were it's winter for six months out of the year! Now that's the kind of math I like!