One mighty expensive tomato

While waiting for the last of the snow to melt, and for the soil to dry and to warm enough to plant the first seeds of spring, what’s a gardener to do? I suppose it would be a fine and noble thing to spend some time sorting through tools, cleaning and sharpening those that remain useful and repairing or replacing those that are not. It may even suit some to paint the handles of favorite tools a bright color so they can be easily found. Unfortunately, one can only make those chores last so long, and when one finally has to admit that all of one’s tools are in top condition, and the garden shed is spotless and organized, there’s still plenty of early spring left. It was at that point (well, before that point for me; I readily admit that my garden shed is never spotless) that I came across a new book at the library that took my mind off of the chill and mud—at least for a little while.

“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),” by William Alexander, follows the successes and failures common to many gardeners in this area. The author, who lives and gardens in the Hudson Valley, relates his battles with deer and groundhogs, mysterious attacks from unknown enemies that quickly wipe out entire crops, and soil that traps heavy machinery and grows nothing but weeds. (What is a weed anyway? After years spent battling purslane, Alexander discovers that it has become a trendy salad ingredient in New York City, commanding hefty prices.) Nevertheless, Alexander continues to build his soil, create more beds and try to convince his wife and children to share some of the work.

Several years into his project, after a relatively poor harvest year, Alexander sits down to calculate just how much one of his homegrown tomatoes has cost him. After spreading the one-time costs of building his garden over a 20-year life span, and figuring green-market prices for his other produce, the cold hard reality is that each of his Brandywine tomatoes that year cost him $64! That’s not counting his own labor. Does he quit? Of course not. After all, he says, “Gardening is, by its very nature, an expression of the triumph of optimism over experience.” In other words, next year will be better.

While I am not so naïve as to think that home-grown vegetables cost nothing more than the price of a package of seed, in all honesty I don’t think I want to know exactly how much one of my tomatoes actually cost to grow. If I were to find that my tomatoes cost $64 each, it might give me pause—until the next seed catalogs came in the mail.