According to my calculations, each tomato I grow costs about as much as an entire restaurant lunch, including a beverage and tip.
— Ira Wood
Matters of Opinion August 2026: The High Cost of Tomatoes
Ira Wood looks under those little green leaves to see what the red morsels really cost
Click on the image to listen to Ira as he reads the column
August 2026 – Have you ever found yourself just staring into the refrigerator at lunchtime, as if something good would appear if you just stood there long enough? And if lunch is a problem, is there any better solution than a big fat garden fresh tomato?
Why grow tomatoes?
I have to admit that of all the irrational things I do – and the list is not a short one – growing tomatoes is at the very top. It’s not that I don’t get a good harvest, or that they succumb to Fusarium wilt or blossom end rot; in fact, I rarely suffer any of the problems common to backyard gardeners.
The issue is strictly economic. Because according to my calculations, each tomato I grow costs about as much as an entire restaurant lunch, including a beverage and tip.
What makes tomato raising worth it?
Exorbitant as the cost may be, I have to admit that I do not regret a single penny, nor, time being money, the many hours I spend growing them. Because really, what food is more satisfying than a perfect tomato, and where, besides your own garden, can you obtain them, just picked, warm, and juicy, and sweet; pornographically firm and full?
In the supermarket? That’s not even funny. In the farmer’s market? Maybe, if you get there early enough; if you don’t mind eating something that’s been fondled and sniffed and squeezed by a hundred dirty hands.
In truth, what fruit or vegetable is the centerpiece of an entire meal without even having to be cooked? What can be thrown, all by itself, between two slices of bread to make a perfectly satisfying sandwich? What can you confidently serve to a carload of unexpected guests with just a drizzle of oil and a leaf of basil?
What is special about heirloom tomatoes?
Heirloom tomatoes fresh from the garden are one of the few things in life that are no more available to the rich than to us ordinary folks willing to grow them. My wife’s now deceased literary agent, an incredibly wealthy and sophisticated Manhattan snob, used to beg us all year not to forget her annual FedEx shipment of garden tomatoes and offer us the use of her swank Upper East Side apartment in return. And why not?
They make the sweetest pasta sauce, the most complex salsa, bruschetta, gazpacho; the most colorful Greek salad. You can stuff them with tuna and olives, broil them on the grill, and juice them for Bloody Mary’s.
What does it cost to grow tomatoes?
Money can’t buy the exquisite pleasures of fresh grown tomatoes straight from the garden…as long as you have enough money, that is. Which is what I’ve been tallying up recently and the news is shocking.
Take the land, for instance, or to be au courant the terroir. My garden happens to be on a separate lot next to my house lot. It’s got perfect southern exposure, decades of soil continually built up by compost, organic matter, seaweed, and worms, high fences to keep out the deer, and gates painstakingly repaired year after year.
Of course, we’ve thought of selling the lot, but then we’d have to clear land for an entirely new garden, and cut down trees, and tear out ornamentals, yadda, yadda, yadda. By current real estate prices, the lost opportunity costs of using a buildable lot for a garden runs well into the low six-figures.
What else adds to the cost?
Now figure in the time: plowing, pruning, staking, spraying, weeding; not to mention chasing away chipmunks and getting up at sunrise to pick off the slugs. It’s hard to attach a salary to these kinds of tasks but even the price of a garden service could run twenty to forty dollars an hour. And that’s just in-season.
What about the hours spent pouring over seed catalogs while the ground is still frozen, or trudging through the snow to nurse the seedlings in the greenhouse, or tearing into the garden in the middle of the night to throw a blanket over the tender plants to save them from an unexpected frost.
Now calculate the price of the seeds, tools, electricity for the pump in the summer and the greenhouse in the winter. The price of organic fertilizer and liquid fish emulsion and the cost of gas to go collect truckloads of salt hay mulch. I haven’t even mentioned chicken wire, tomato supports, floating row covers, and irrigation hoses.
Is growing tomatoes worth it?
Add it all up and divide by the number of tomatoes I harvest and ask me if the individual cost of each one is not absolutely insane. Just don’t ask me at lunchtime when I’m mournfully staring into the refrigerator dreaming of a fresh garden tomato. At that moment, I’d pay absolutely any price.
I’m Ira Wood…and that’s my opinion.
—
Ira Wood hosts The Lowdown, a weekly interview program on WOMR-FM featuring authors, politicians, artists, and scientists, as well as cops, addicts, and fishermen. His guests have included the famous, the infamous, and the eccentric, as well as dedicated men and women who work to make the Cape and the world a better place. He served four terms on the Wellfleet Board of Selectmen.
