We’ve all got tons of gardening books I’m sure… but it sure is fun to read about how other people struggle with growing stuff!
The $64 Tomato is really more a collection of sequential essays, but there is a story that is told. William Alexander wrote this book – his first – to chronicle his years as a gardener in the yard of an old house in the Hudson River valley.
The book is funny and fast. All of us can appreciate his approach, his genuine desire to grow apples organically (ultimately winding up with a slow progression of natural pest control efforts that ends in shock and awe fashion with waves of WMDs), his love of a brandywine tomato (a love shared by a rascally groundhog), and his evolution into a nearly self-sustaining small-scale farmer.
The stories work as fantastic gardening anecdotes, but along the way there is plenty to learn about the author, his family, and their lives in an old house in a small town.
Well worth the read. And do not follow his math on the $64 tomato. It’s depressing. But, we don’t REALLY get into gardening to save money right?
Filed under: reviews , $64 tomato, gardening book review, vegetable gardening
I read a review of this book last year and it gave me and my husband a good laugh. Considering we didn’t go to the elaborate and expensive extremes that he did to start our veggie garden, we find ourselves actually saving a lot of money on tomatoes. Can you believe that even at the height of the season some people are charging $5.99 per pound for heirlooms at the farmers markets? Nuts! In the town we live in, with so many gardners, we can’t even give the things away for free!
Yeah. And listen, I’m no finance wizard, but every good gardener who also works for a soul-sucking giant corporation understands this:
GAAP says you can defer your acquisition costs over the expected life of the returning commodity. Now, with the life-giving properties of a tomato, flavonoids etc., and the average life expectancy of 73 years, a tomato planted at age 35 provides 38 years of healthy living. Take your initial sunk costs (minus some fixed items) of $3,000 to build an elaborate garden (and not one like my silly little chicken wire dirt pile) and you more than overcome your costs. Not even close to $64.
Besides, tomatoes like brandywines just taste good. I’d even consider paying $5.99 a pound! Luckily, we gardeners don’t have to.
I will have to get a copy. From the write up it sounds like my $100 per pound fish I catch.
Ha! Yep. I guess it never pays to do the math. Fish or veggies.