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 (Paperback)

~ (Author)
Key Phrases: organic apples, drooling opossum, stirrup hoe, William Alexander, Christopher Walken, One Man's Weed Is Jean-Georges's Salad (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. When the author of this hilarious horticultural memoir plants a large vegetable garden and a small orchard on his Hudson Valley farmstead, he finds himself at odds with almost all creation. At the top of the food chain are the landscaping contractors, always behind schedule, frequently derelict, occasionally menacing. Then there are the herds of deer that batter the electrified fence to get at Alexander's crop, and the groundhog who simply squeezes between the wires, apparently savoring the 10,000-volt shocks. Most insidious are the armies of beetles, worms, maggots and grubs that provoke Alexander, initially an organic-produce zealot, into drenching his entire property with pesticides. He braves these trials, along with hours of backbreaking labor and the eye-rolling of his wife and children, for the succulence of homegrown food. He also manages to maintain a sense of humor, riffing on everything from the ugliness of garden ornaments to the politics of giving away vegetables to friends. Alexander's slightly poisoned paradise manages to impart an existential lesson on the interconnectedness of nature and the fine line between nurturing and killing.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From School Library Journal

Adult/High School-Alexander had always dreamed of having his own garden, where he could grow healthy, organic fruits and vegetables. When his family moved to the Hudson Valley, he got his wish-there was more than enough land for his vegetable garden, his apple orchard, his wife's flower garden, and a swimming pool. He had done his research and knew which crops to plant and when, what type of fencing he'd need, and how to defend his garden against predators. What he hadn't counted on were the facts that planting sod around the swimming pool killed the corn, and that planting rosebushes killed the sod. There were also landscaping contractors always behind schedule, a groundhog that figured out how to get through a 10,000-electric-volt fence, and feasting deer. After years of fighting pests, Alexander realized that there was no such thing as an organic garden in the Northeast, and that for each tomato he'd taken from his garden he'd spent $64; ultimately, what was once a hobby became a second full-time job. Throughout the telling, the author manages to maintain a sense of humor, riffing on everything from the ugliness of garden ornaments to the politics of giving away vegetables to friends. This hilarious horticultural memoir manages to impart an existential lesson on the interconnectedness of nature and the fine line between nurturing and killing. Teens looking for a biography, a book on biology, or a humorous read can't go wrong with this title.-Erin Dennington, Chantilly Regional Library, Fairfax County, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 304 pages
• Publisher: Algonquin Books (March 2, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1565125576
• ISBN-13: 978-1565125575
• Product Dimensions: 8.2 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #73,685 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Garden of Eden, April 30, 2006

By	Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: 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 (Hardcover)

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."

39 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Animal lovers beware!, June 13, 2007

By	Samara64 - See all my reviews

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.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Funny and Sad at the same time, October 3, 2006

By	Douglas E. Welch "Podcaster/Tech Geek" (Van Nuys, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: 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 (Hardcover)

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.