Customer Reviews

The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost his Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden

5 star:		(31)
4 star:		(21)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

It is a story as old as America itself. When we dream, we dream big. Big houses, big cars and, in the case of The $64 Tomato, big gardens. In this book, author William Alexander details his love/hate relationship with his garden. I knew I was going to love this book within the first chapter, when I found myself laughing out loud time and time again. Alexander perfectly captures the idealism and absurdity that usually accompany any home improvement project.

I must say that, after my childhood of helping my Grandmother and my Father in the garden and even, reluctantly, maintaining my own small garden plot as a child, I found it a bit ludicrous that anyone would actually set out to "design" a vegetable garden. In my experience, you usually just mark out an area, have the neighbor plow it up and disc it down, lay out some string lines and plant. Aesthetics were rarely, if ever, an issue. Now you bring in experts, test the soil, try exotic new varieties of plants and, so it seems, endure many failures.

While the book is funny, it is also a trifle sad. There is an underlying current of hubris which seems to thrive in the heart of every American. We like to think we can conquer and control anything, even nature itself, when, in reality, we can only hold back nature for short periods of time and even then, only in relatively small areas. It is also a story of having eyes too large for our stomachs. Rows and rows of zucchini that must be given away, if not forced on the neighbors. Yes, we love having fresh food from our very own gardens, but it seems we have no self-control. If "some" is good than "more" must certainly be better.

The $64 Tomato is entertaining and enlightening because it is so true. Anyone with any aspirations to gardening will recognize themselves in its pages. Gardening, like life itself, is about struggle and this book details many struggles with bugs, grass, weeds and neighbors. Even then, I can guess that these were only a small portion of the troubles that occurred in the real garden. Television writers, like my wife, constantly deal with this issue. Just because something happened in real life, often times the viewers will never believe it. I would guess there are more stories that this gardening author has yet to tell.

The saddest part, but one that rings true, is the author's struggle in finding balance between gardening as a task and gardening as a joy. I know that I experience this every day in my own garden and I am sure you do, too. It is a rare gardener who can find joy in pulling weeds time and time again That said, don't let the dandelions get you down. Pour a nice, cool lemonade (preferably made from your own lemons), sit back in your favorite chair and enjoy, if just for a moment, the garden you have created. While I certainly hope you don't spend $64 for each tomato you harvest, this book can make you laugh and give you solace in the knowledge that most gardener's are happily suffering right along with you.

Working all day at a nearby research institute, sometimes Bill Alexander would have to gird his loins when he came home at sundown and still had all his gardening to do. He and his physician wife owned a patch of land neighboring boys used as a baseball field, but Alexander always had weekend dreams of turning it into a combination orchard and flower garden. Under the direction of a comically sketched landscape designer, he made his dreams come true, despite the skepticism of his sitcom-like kids, a teen girl and a slacker boy named Zach, characterized as living in a dank room filled with unwashed laundry. The kids don't really care--on the outside; but inside their hearts swell with pride as their dear old dad tames a recalcitrant patch of land into a Robert Creeley like garden of which Elizabeth Lawrence might have been proud.

His wife likes it too. Digging in the garden is like horticultural Viagra, and when he really gets going he rushes into the house and grabs her. "By the time I was done, I felt strangely, strongly aroused. That night, the smell of pollen still fresh in my nostrils, I made passionate, urgent love to my mystified (but appreciative) wife." When I was a teen, we called this "TMI"--too much information--but it's a nice reminder of the benefits of married life.

There's a sinister side to gardening as well, as befits a hobby so elemental, and Alexander meets a strange contractor with a bizarre resemblance to Christopher Walken. Elsewhere he characterizes his battle with squirrels as "like living Hitchcock's THE BIRDS, only with squirrels."

Alexander is not what you'd call an outstanding writer, and some of his sentences bunch themselves up like caterpillars, but at his best he provides an insight into the myriad reasons men like to garden, and as a bonus he has a graceful way of inserting potted history lessons into his anecdotes. Discussing how difficult it is to grow apples organically in the northeast, he manages to bring in both Johnny Appleseed and his own horticultural hero, Thomas Jefferson. Did you know that St. Francis of Assisi was the one who first staged the now popular nativity creche scenes, and that he used actual animals to play the sheep, donkeys and lambs? And Alexander also can turn a poetic phrase: the first apple trees to bloom become "a merry explosion of pink and white popcorn."

Finally, you'll laugh hearing about his father's ways with growing apples that bore little labels bleached into their skins, so that neighbors and relatives could have their own personalized apples, the "local community's version of being invited to Truman Capote's Black and White Ball."

The author is a superb writer, I admit, but his research into organic gardening is shallow and very inadequate. I gardened in the Northeast for 20 years and never spent what he did and had almost none of the problems he had. Take his assertion that there are no organic apples in the northeast. My grandmother grew apples in Pennsylvania and had them in the middle of an area with 100 or so chickens. The chickens fertilized the ground and ate the bugs and pests that would have damaged the apples and she never had to use pesticides. The author could have attracted birds into his orchard and garden but he never mentions birds in his book. He also never mentioned trying companion planting, which is when you plant things to repel pests or plant them to draw the pests to them and not to what you want to eat. I have used companion planting very successfully but the author doesn't seem to know about it. The main thing he missed was getting his soil healthy in the meadow by planting legumes to break up the clay and add nitogen. The author was sloppy in his research and now is spreading a bad message: That organic gardening often doesn't work which has not ever been my experience in 40 years of gardening--20 years of which were in the Northeast. Shame on him.

For those of us who putter in gardens, William Alexander has done a good thing. His book "The $64 Tomato" blows the roof off home gardening. If this were a reality show, the title would be "Backyard Gardening: EXPOSED!!!!" But thank goodness, this isn't television. A craftsman with words, Alexander writes with a light touch, delightful bursts of humor, and the wisdom of a man who has done some things in his life and learned from them.

A full complement of characters, human and otherwise, populate the book: Alexander's long-suffering and loving family, a spooky handyman who looks and acts like Christopher Walken, a crew of exasperating contractors, and a menagerie of groundhogs, deer, Japanese beetles and sod webworms. This latter bunch, Alexander's nemesis, is infuriating--and hugely entertaining for us onlookers. They defy Alexander at every turn. They come, they see his garden, and they conquer.

Most gardening books are earnest, reassuring adult versions of "The Little Engine That Could": you can do it, you can do it. They assume a universe of order and control and endless amounts of time. Alexander will have none of it. His book is about labor, rapture, folly, joy, stress, sensuality, sweat, violence, despair and sex. Sounds a lot like life. Or reality TV.

For anyone who has every planted a tomato seedling in freshly turned earth on a bright spring day, Alexander and "The $64 Tomato" deliver a bountiful harvest.

"The $64 Tomato" at first glance may seem to be simply a gardening book. However, once you take a glance inside, you'll find William Alexander's story a funny and insightful tale of the author's ongoing attempt to gain a modicum of control over his fate - in Alexander's case aptly represented by his own backyard garden. "Tomato" is as much about the struggle of a man with his nature, as man against nature.

Whether trying to outsmart an alpha groundhog (which Alexander, with an appropriate, if not appreciative, nod to a formidable opponent, names SuperChuck), or contending with bizarre contractors(one of whom bears a striking resemblance to the actor Christopher Walken) or reassuring his wife and kids of his sanity after wandering through his garden in January, Alexander keeps us asking "Is it really right to be so entertained by someone's angst?" and "Why am I laughing out loud when he is hurting the most?".

In between all of this, we learn fascinating facts about the food we usually take for granted. For instance, Alexander informs us the tomato originated in Central America with the Aztecs, was hauled off to Europe by Cortez and the conquistadors, returned 300 years later to the New World with the colonists, and was finally promoted to culinary prominence by none other then Thomas Jefferson.

"The $64 Tomato" is both a funny and thought-provoking examination of how much emotional upheaval, consternation, and struggle we willingly endure in pursuit of our most cherished pastimes. In Alexander's case, it's so called "weekend" gardening."

Whether you are into gardening or just an observer of people and their foibles, "The $64 Tomato" may not compel you to rush out and buy a hoe and wheelbarrow. But it will undoubtedly leave you thinking about your own favorite obsessions and compulsions in an entirely new light.

The first chapters in this book are entertaining, well written, and everyone who gardens could probably relate to (working with contractors who show up weeks late, etc). I was thouroughly enjoying the book until I came upon the chapter where the author tries to rid his garden of "pests". (The pests are deer, groundhogs, squirrels, possums, basically anything that moves). The heartless and inhumane techniques he uses were abhorent and made me HATE the author all at once, when previously I'd been chuckling along and enjoying his story. he traps a possum and rather than letting it go miles away, he leaves it in the trap, in the blistering sun, for a day hoping it will die of heat suffocation. When the possum survives the first 24 hours, he decides a brilliant idea would be to let the poor thing suffer another 24 hours. after TWO DAYS of torture hasn't killed the animal, he decides a "more humane and quicker death" would be to drown the thing, so he throws the whole trap, animal and all, into the water. That doesn't work either, so then FINALLY he drives a few miles away and realeases it! WHAT THE HELL??????? What kind of heartless man does that??? Then to make matters WORSE, he doesn't learn his lesson about the trap, and kills another animal in it, a smart groundhog who up until then had outsmarted him. THEN he wires up his fence to 10 thousand volts and laces peanut butter all over it to make sure the deer touch the fence with their tongues and lips to get a "real jolt". This guy is a sadist, seriously. Really, I can't believe a person like this exists.
I'm glad I swapped the book at paperbackswap. com so I didn't pay the author one penny of my own money. Oh, it goes on. He deals with squirrels also, and caterpillars, ruthesslessy tearing them in half or spraying them with an acid-like substance. Worse, he's teaching his two kids how to handle animals like this, to be sure and past it on for generations to come. He makes some comment about animal lovers, that htey should put their energies into helping humans instead. Yes, buddy, you do need help, I can see that. He has major problems with animals. He fears them, apparently, and the only way his small brain can figure out how to handle them is to torture them and kill them in a slow painful death. He learns nothing from his neighbors on either side, who's relationship with animlas seem much healthier and harmonious. In fact, he all but calls his neighbors stupid for that.

Don't give this guy your money. He doesn't deserve it.

Sadly, I was never able to get far enough into this book to be able to give it a reasonable review. About halfway through, the author goes into chilling detail about his efforts to get rid of several of those pesky creatures that we call wildlife. When his efforts to keep said wildlife from his crops fail, he decides that they need to be killed. After his description of how he trapped an oppossum, left it in the sun to die and, failing that, tried to drown it (all witnessed by his children), I was finished with this book. The fact that this is offered up as humor makes me sick.

I saw a woman chuckling in a waiting room as she read this book so I decided to tuck into it, too. 200-odd pages in, I hadn't yet laughed, but senses of humor differ, I suppose; the humor struck me as too heavy-handed and forced. I probably would have continued with it, as it was jovial and I like the topic, but I was appalled when the author revealed total insensitivity to the suffering of animals he trapped in his ironically named Havahart traps, allowing them to die in the August heat of dehydration, both deliberately and through carelessness. All the mea culpa's he offered after these animals' plights did little to offset this inhumanity.

Moreover, after moving into deer country, he expresses astonishment at deer raiding his garden and uses it as an opportunity to claim that animal-rights people (full disclosure--I am not an animal rights person, just one who believes we should treat our pets, livestock, and wildlife humanely, and I am not opposed to deer management) would be well advised to expend just a little of their energy to better the lot of humans to make the world a better place. This is a tiresome gambit repeated all the time whenever people help animals; however, the people stating this usually then turn around and buy a new stereo or car without batting an eye...I mean, it's not unreasonable to suggest that the author's family would perhaps do the world a lot of good by helping set up a clean water supply for a third-world village rather than lavish so much time and money on their little plot of land in a country that is already bursting with food.

And that gets me to an aspect of the book that grates a bit, especially in these economic times: the author claims not to be affluent or privileged or rich, etc., yet there are mentions of southwestern vacations and snorkeling and such, plus of course the set piece of the giant old house on farmland needing restoration etc. Hello? That all adds up to affluence and privilege. C'mon down in the trenches a bit to visit hardworking people who work hard but have to choose between paying the phone bill or gassing up the car, and then let's talk about what's affluence and what's not.

This is not the farm version of "Mr Blanding Builds His Dream House," alas.

2 stars may be generous but if you can get around what for me were some very big roadblocks it's not all in all a bad read.

1) The author is more than a little self absorbed. Immediately on hearing that he owns the empty lot where all the neighboorhood children play baseball (and have for years if not generations before he bought the property) he decides to put in a garden and slap an electric fence around it. Yes, he owns the land and he has the right to do this but as someone who's lived in a small town this is not going to ingratiate you to your neighbors. Likewise his neighbors on either side put out food and salt licks for the local deer and he doesn't just put up wire but puts peanut butter on the wire to trick the dear into licking an electric fence to scare them out of the neighboorhood and laments not being allowed to shoot them. Protecting your garden is on thing but surely your neighboors have the right to feed the deer if they like them.

2) The author hates animals. He's very upfront about this and gives rather half hearted excuses and reasons for this. The result however is that he is really cruel to them. He offhandedly makes remarks about getting rid of his kids pets or them dying. He electrocutes, sprays, and traps local wildlife. One of his biggest complaints is he isn't allowed to shoot them. He 'accidentally' kills a number of animals he catches in humane traps and does his darnedest to kill some of them on purpose. This is seriously offputting to me. We have rabbits and squirrels in my garden and we use safe, humane ways to keep them out. This isn't a 3rd world farmer fighting for life; this is a bored suburban hobbiest gardner.

3)The man is completely lacking in pratical sense. It doesn't take someone who got their engineering degree to figure out if your contractor is constantly showing up late and runs 2 months behind on the design layout (which was quoted as 2 weeks) then there will most likely be problems with the more detailed parts. But he hired her without even interviewing anyone else. Why? According to the book because he was sexual attacted to her. He was aroused by her dirty fingernails, strawberry blonde hair and use of latin plant names. Of course then the project takes place a year after it was scheduled and isn't what he wanted (she tells him what he wants is impossible when really she just didn't know how to do it.)

That last one is actually a pretty good guide for the book. This book is kind of shallow. He puts things in because they sound interesting or look nice. For all that he discusses books he's read he doesn't really seem to put in the research as to what plants do well where. He acts like the locals are condescending to him when in it sounds more like he condescends to them. Sure he'll take a plant to the local nursery to have them figure out what's wrong when it starts dying but did it occur to him to ask first what would do well in his area? Did he ask his neighbors what grew well in their yard and what to look out for? Maybe I missed it. His interest seems to be more in being the person who owns the Big Brown House or the Perfect Garden than in the process of making them.

If $10,000 of landscaping and $50 bags of the perfect mulch (which he admits wouldn't be as good for the plants as $20 rolls of garden fabric) are requirements for you then don't be suprised when you end up with a $64 tomato...

What makes gardening a great hobby or an overwhelming passion is the promise of perfection. The road to a perfect garden starts years in advance with planning, plotting, and prodding and no guarantee of achieving the success that seems so attainable during the dead of winter. William Alexander's book "The $64 Tomato" has captured the essence of the quest and has done so in an extremely hilarious, often laugh-out-loud manner. If your passion is not gardening, it is still easy to recognize the fine border between an activity and an obsession in his bright and humorous memoir relating his adventures from buying his Hudson Valley home and planning the initial gardens to his struggles with landscapers, tools, earth, animals, family, and himself.

This well-written tale of gardening adventures describes Alexander's efforts to contain his horticultural plans and ambitions, occasionally shared by his family, with the reality of taming rocky, clay soil, electrifying the garden to fend it from the deer and groundhogs, and gathering and storing of the produce. Alexander's witty self-deprecating look at the horticultural process and his personal commitment to achieve a perfect garden makes a very enjoyable read.

For any of us who have ever planted a garden with the expectations of seeing and smelling beautiful flowers and eating tasty, delectable vegetables or fruit only to see the ravishes of rabbits, groundhogs, and deer empathize with Mr. Alexander's yearly ordeals. Yet, he also knows the joy of the earth and we understand that this may be what drives all gardeners, the feel of the earth in our hands, the look of a perfect tomato or strawberry, and the understanding we get another chance next spring.