Story of the $64 Tomato

Friends who know me would vouch for the fact that I spend more time in the garden of my house than anywhere else. Of course I do, do the chores around the house like cleaning, cooking, laundry and .. and… (ok, ok, enough already!) But I tend to be more in the garden though. From early Spring to late Fall, I spend most of my time there. What do I do there? Certainly not reading a book and getting lost in the fantasy world. Come on, let us be practical and be down to earth. I do gardening, working on soil beds, weeding and cleaning the flower and vegetable beds, becoming one with the Nature.

I like to read a lot on the different flower varieties that are around. When I see a flowering plant that I am not familiar with, I do research on it to find out more. Whenever I go to Home Depot or Lowes, I end up like a zombie in the garden section looking at the different plants that are on display and reading their little tags trying to find out what type they belong to. I am certainly not a Botanists but I could become one if I took up on the program. I love plants. The different colors, sizes, shapes and texture of the plants (just not flowers) makes me happy – takes me to the la-la land (ok, not going there).

So, what does the title have to do with any of this? “The $64 Tomato” is a book by William Alexander and anyone who is in the garden club and also a voracious reader (pick me, pick me) would know about it. The author explains the joy of gardening, fruits (or rather vegetables) of labor doing the garden work in your own backyard, how it relieves stress and foremost what it means to garden in terms of satisfaction. He explains the fact that by the time you end up growing any vegetable after putting in the time, material and labor, you would end up with a tomato that costs $64.

Don’t believe me? Fine. Let me put it this way. To start a garden – flower or vegetable bed in your backyard, you have to prep the soil along the fence or near the back wall of the house. Till the soil, add garden soil, fertilizers, and after the bed is ready you put in the seeds that might cost you $1.50 to $3.00 a packet. When the seed is sown, comes the watering process, cleaning the beds of weeds and worms/insects, putting a fence around the bed so the deer or the squirrel won’t eat your plants, putting support for your plants and such. By the time the plant actually grows and yields anything for that matter, you have already spent enough dollars on your garden that that the one vegetable that fully grows, (bless the fruit that escaped the deer’s craving) in this case for example, a tomato, would cost $64 which is more than what you would pay at the grocery store.

Now that Spring is here, I have started my garden work. I have made my trips to Home Depot and Lowes buying flowering and vegetable plants. I am yet to start planting them and you will hear more of it in my upcoming blogs (so the tooting begins…) Having said this, any true gardener would still agree to grow his or her own tomatoes in their backyard, put in their labor, spend hours watering the garden, weeding and feeding them, caressing and supporting the plants, fencing and applying scram to keep the deer and squirrels away to see that one ripe tomato on their dining table. n'est-ce pas?