“Price is what you pay, value is what you get”, Warren Buffett My father taught me the importance of looking for value rather than low price — something he learned early in life. You would think that anyone who helped support his family during the Great Depression would be all about low prices. But what he learned was the lowest price was often not the best value. After six decades of growing veggies, I am still awed by the productivity and food quality from a really healthy plant. I want to grow the best food possible and I still feel growing your own high quality veggies is one of the more important choices you can make — especially when food related illnesses are at epidemic levels because of nutrient sparse foods. But, I mostly look at gardening through very cost effective glasses now. I don’t want to spend money recklessly, or even more important, waste my time. For me, that means doing things right in the first place, not wasting years trying to work with inferior soil, fertilizer, and support systems. The most costly part of gardening is making a mistake that costs you a big part of a summer’s harvest, and our kits can help minimize mistakes. Gardeners will say you can’t put a price on the unparalleled pleasures of providing fresh food for your family. But it feels even better when you are producing bigger harvests and putting more nourishing food on your table, filling your pantry and freezer, and getting a much better return on your investment. It feels a lot better to pick 100 tomatoes per plant than 10. When you start to see real financial rewards from your efforts instead of a few fresh tomatoes in season, it changes your thinking about the possibilities and value of a backyard garden — even how you invest your time. Many of our customers, without a great deal of effort, put their own veggies on their dinner tables all year, even without canning.

We space these plants far enough apart to prevent spreading of diseases and insects from one plant to the next. If the spacing needs to be adjusted, we just move the planter — something that is hard to do in a permanent structure like a raised bed. Our kits now come with solid pipe bracing at the bottom that eliminates pounding anything in the ground. This means they can be used on concrete patios or wooden decks.

“Mini Garden Obelisk System” Best Deal of the Year Some purchases are investments that pay for themselves.People have many places to spend (or invest) their money, so they sometimes look at which purchase or investment gives them a better return, or value. Unfortunately, it is hard to establish value, so people often mistake getting a better value with something being on sale. Retailers know this so they mark up prices, and then put things on sale to stimulate consumers to buy. But, there are products that provide good value. And, economists today say durable goods that return savings are not only a great bet against inflation, they are a better investment than putting your money into most investment accounts. Along with the product cost going up if you wait, you will the lose savings they generate. Here are examples of both. Financial investment If you invest $250 for 3 years at 5%, you would get $39.41 as a return on investment. It will take 15 years to get 100% return on your investment. Valued added purchases. One common purchase we consider to be a good investment is replacing windows to save on heating costs. The average payback period on the money spent on windows is 10 years. So, at 10 years they would pay for themselves and you would get a 100% return. (Note: The life expectancy of replacement windows today is about 15 years.) Home insulation, in the best case scenario, would be 2-4 years to recover your costs. But buying either windows or insulation now, at lower cost, can also save on increasing energy costs to come, and therefore compare favorably to financial investments. Energy costs are sure to go up, probably only exceeded by food costs. But what if you invested in a product that could more than pay for itself in the first year, and give you a 500% (or over $1200) return on a $250 investment in 3 years? Plus you would still have that original investment for more than 10-15 years and every year, it would pay you dividends greater that the original cost. This would be our mini garden obelisk kits. An additional benefit is better food quality and therefore better health, along with a more productive, longer life. One of our customers has just finished her third season with an obelisk garden and single Mountain Magic plant. The first year her harvest was over 700, the second over 800. and the third year she picked 972 tomatoes (including green ones, some of which are still ripening). This shows you that yields can go up every year — partly from soil quality, partly from fertilizing more, and like anything, you just get better as you do things more. We sold our last tomatoes from outdoor growing on Jan. 2nd this winter. I have to say, I’m almost speechless when I hear someone say they couldn’t use that many tomatoes. We pick them whole (although you can quarter them), freeze them in freezer bags, and use them for cooking later, like making sauces. That’s even easier and faster than a shopping trip for nutrient sparse, inferior canned tomatoes that don’t taste as good. We also dry them, grind them into a powder using our Vitamix, and use them as you would use commercial tomato paste. She has used these tomatoes in salads, made sauces out of them, on sandwiches and just about anything you would use tomatoes for, including canning and freezing. They are extremely versatile for any culinary use, productive, and the easiest tomato I have ever grown. So, she now stands at over $1200 return for her $220 investment made in 2021 — plus better food. This means more than a 500% return on her investment in 3 years. That’s better than if you invested that money almost anywhere, and the risk is much lower. The numbers used are past prices of $3.99/lb for premium organic tomatoes, and those prices are already going up. Food price increases are inevitable with climate change and consolidation in the food industry. This is why so many billionaires are investing in farmland. They say it’s about getting a low risk, high return on their investment. The bottom line is, they expect food prices to go up faster than most other investments. These kits can also be used for cukes, pole beans, peppers, and snap peas, or many other crops. More of a mini garden than a tomato cage When I talk to people about our obelisks, they sometimes think they are expensive for a tomato cage. That might be true if they were just tomato cages. However, the support system (obelisk) is only half of the cost of our mini gardens. The rest is the container and soil — which are much more costly if you build a raised bed. The raised bed would take years to pay for itself because of the high cost of the materials and extra soil required — not to mention the labor of building it, and filling it. And you would still need to buy support systems.

Many years ago, we grew Mountain Magic tomatoes like you see in the left pic below — using plastic pots and wire cages. You can see how much more vigor our plants have today (pic on right) using fiber pots, and with obelisks supporting them. Both of these use about the same amount of soil, but today they are much more productive. These support systems evolved over 20 years because as our plants became bigger and more productive, we needed to provide them with a bigger and stronger support system. For example, as our plants became bigger, they started blowing over in late summer. These obelisks which are much wider and independent of the container, stay standing even in the strongest winds. In 50 years of gardening, I have probably tried at least 100 different ways of supporting plants. I can emphatically tell you the support system does make a difference in productivity and overall plant health. Any system that crowds stems and foliage makes a plant more susceptible to insect and disease damage. This includes narrow cages and flat trellising. I have seen diseases, and insects like spider mites and aphids, spread 20 ft. from plant to plant in just 10 days when stems and leaves are touching. You can easily double your harvest just by keeping your plants healthy and producing until frost, and the best way to do that is proper spacing.

Modern, more efficient design, but based on nature’s principles, like living soil and permaculture. If you were to build a 4’x4’x10″ deep raised bed, great soil alone would cost several hundred dollars — and with no support structure. When people build these, they skimp on the soil and end up with lower yields, lower quality food, and lots of labor. Then they spend the next couple of years adding amendments to their gardens. I must hear this 100 times a year. People build a raised bed and have intentions of filling it with great soil because they understand the importance of soil quality. But as expenses start adding up, soil quality is sacrificed. This is due in great part to the soil in a raised bed being used in a very inefficient manner. Less, but more efficiently used great soil is much more valuable (and a better investment) than a larger amount of mediocre soil. It can be expensive though, so use it wisely. Think about minimizing this major expense before you build. I am telling you this even though we sell soil. And even though we sell tomato plants in the spring, I will say that you will have a better yield and easier to grow plants (per sq ft of garden space) by buying fewer plants and spacing them more because they will be healthier. Permaculture This approach guides us to mimic the patterns and relationships we can find in nature. It seems it is now being used as a buzzword in advertising. It does not mean replacing soil every year like some soil companies tell us. Where in nature is soil replaced every year? Instead, the living soil biology maintains the soil. If your soil is alive and healthy, it should take care of itself for many years unless you damage it by tilling, digging, or chemical use. Raised beds are expensive largely because of inefficient use of soil.For feeder roots to function properly, they need a lot of air, so they are primarily found in the top few inches of highly oxygenated soil. Deeper soil does hold more water that can help plants, but feeder roots (the roots that are most active and absorb nutrients) are spread across the soil surface where oxygen is abundant. And the health and productivity of the plant is a reflection of the size of the feeder root system. With air infiltration occurring through the side walls of our porous fiber pots, much more of the soil (the surface and the sides) becomes functional for nutrient uptake, so less soil can support larger plants. It’s all about surface area and oxygen rich soil: a 28″x16″ deep fiber pot (45 gallon) has 3200 sq surface inches of oxygen rich soil on top and the sides — vs — 2304 sq surface inches on the top of a 4×4 bed. A 4×6 bed would be about the same 3400 sq inches surface area as a 45 gallon pot, but would require more than 20 bags of soil @ $23.99 a bag. A 45 gallon fiber pot would need 4 bags. They have the same plant size potential as a 4×6′ raised bed, because they could both absorb about the same amount of nutrients. Bottom line – Soil savings of almost $400 using fiber pots over raised beds because of increased aeration. Raised beds are typically made from cedar or composite wood to avoid chemicals used in pressure treated wood. Cedar is expensive and usually will only last about 10 years with ground contact. I am also now hearing stories about composite wood splintering and warping, even on decks, and within a couple of years. We have used treated wood lined with 42 mil pond liner to avoid soil to treated wood contact in above ground planters, but pond liner is expensive too. And the wood still rots. Roots in healthy soil can take up less space than the plants above ground. When you concentrate soil, like in a raised bed, the above ground stems and leaves get crowded. By using only as much soil as needed per plant, and spacing containers, you get better yields (by minimizing congestion), because you make more efficient use of soil. And since soil is the most expensive component to gardening, especially poor soil that needs constant amendments or replacement, you can be wasting a lot of money (like hundreds of dollars). This is especially true when you consider we have been using the same soil, in the same containers, for 15 years now. Many people would have replaced that soil 15 times in their containers already. Or, they would have been turning and amending their beds for 15 years. These kits also dramatically shorten the long curve of becoming a better gardener. You can spend years of learning the hard way about soil, build beds that will rot in 10 years, buy much more soil than you need to get great results, move tons of soil and amend it, and buy support systems that after a year or two, you find out don’t work well. Or — you just fill our containers with 4 bags of our soil — plant, fertilize, and water — and you’re set for more then a decade. Strong, durable, and made to last.Our oldest obelisk planters are now in their 15th season with the same soil, container, and pipes, and there has been no drop-off in productivity or vigor. These support systems are made from 1/2″ and 3/4″ steel pipes, and they measure 36″ wide at the base. We have found them to be stable without pounding stakes in the ground so they can be used on patios, decks, or brick or concrete surface. A tomato cage made from wire may be cheaper, but they are not very sturdy and usually not very wide. Without enough room to spread their branches, foliage gets congested, leading to insect and disease problems. Our pots are US made of durable fabric we have been using for 15 years. We have tried some cheaper knock-offs that became brittle and started falling apart after just a year or two. If you have to replace the pot, you also have to replace the soil because the soil structure is damaged. We learned this expensive lesson years ago experimenting with cheaper fiber pots.

Obelisk mini-garden pricing Cost includes soil, container, obelisk, netting, and even your plant hardware & netting $ 143.86 soil & pot $ 130.95 tomato $     4.99 total cost $ 279.80 If you bought all the pieces separately, your total cost would be $279.80 Our kit price is $265.00 Our sale price is $245.00for a savings of almost $35.00 if you order now Kit cost $ 265.00 Sale price $ 245.00 This is our current sale price. Sale price is for a limited time only. Obelisks kits will be delivered on a first ordered, first delivered basis.We reserve the right to have price increases if costs increase due to tariffs.Pipe and fitting prices have already increased since last fall.

Here is a cucumber planter using an obelisk kit. It produced bushels of cukes throughout the season. Like other vining crops, cukes grow better vertically because of improved air circulation, and more sunlight penetrating the foliage. Another great choice is Seychelles pole beans which produce weekly harvests of gourmet quality green beans for us until frost. Starting early, sometimes we double crop with Sugar Snap peas and then our summer crops.

You want a support system that your plants will grow into rather than spend the summer tying up plants that have outgrown your support system. We have spent hours trying to support plants every time it rains, so branches don’t break off from the rain. I used to spend many hours every summer tying up peppers so the branches wouldn’t break under the weight of the fruit. Now, the plants grow through the netting, which holds them up and prevents breakage. (see below) This takes literally no time at all. We just add another layer of netting as the plants grow bigger. A few years ago, we picked 142 sweet peppers off one plant. But, that did not include what we could have harvested from a large branch that broke off. A flat wall of netting is much less effective because plants growing on a flat plane inevitably create foliage congestion. Each obelisk comes with 16 ft. of netting so you can space branches better.

The bed on the left (below) is already crowded, providing ideal conditions for insects and diseases. Using only a fraction of the soil, the plant on the right will outproduce the entire bed on the left and it will be easier to maintain. Spacing vining crops is the best prevention for pests (insects and diseases) that thrive when plants are crowded.

Planting tomatoes (or most garden plants) like the bed above is asking for trouble. As we increased spacing, our yields have increased dramatically per sq. ft. using far fewer, but healthier plants.

Although this system was designed for beginners, we have found they are even more popular with more experienced gardeners.

This pic was taken the first of September.

This was taken in mid October.

Notice in the back left of the pic below, the new obelisks are still standing (even though they are not pounded into the ground) while the old one in front leaned over, along with the larger pipe structure. This was a surprise to us and we are still trying to completely understand why the new design is so much more stable. Our best answer is that it is a much more solid structure with the new top connectors, and the legs fastened together.