Sign in with Facebook
Loading...
15th out of 19 books
—
13 voters
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
William Alexander had a simple dream of having a vegetable garden and small orchard in his backyard. It was a dream that would lead to life-and-death battles with groundhogs, webworms, and weeds; midnight expeditions in the dead of winter to dig up fresh thyme; skirmishes with neighbors who feed the vermin (i.e., deer); the near electrocution of the tree man; and the pity...more
Hardcover
Published
April 14th 2006
by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill
(first published 2006)
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
3,000)
This is an enjoyable memoir about a married couple who design an elaborate vegetable garden, but it quickly turns into a more expensive, ambitious and time-consuming project than they anticipated. Toward the end of the book, the author adds up his gardening expenses and calculates the worth of the produce he's grown -- and he realizes that it cost him $64 to grow each of his 19 heirloom tomatoes that summer.
There were several amusing chapters, including William's experience in trying to grow a...more
There were several amusing chapters, including William's experience in trying to grow a...more
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
Jul 29, 2010
Ciara
rated it
4 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
autobio-memoir,
read-in-2010
i expected this to be something in the vein of all those sustainable gardening/lefty quasi-gentleman farmer memoirs making the rounds these days, with page after page dedicated to the author's environmental rights decision-making processes & lofty pronouncements on the superiority of home-grown tomatoes. what i actually got was so much funnier & more satisfying! i mean, yes, the dude acknowledges that he could conceivably be seen as a gentleman farmer, he describes himself several times...more
I gravitate toward books about gardening, and this seemed a likely choice. I was a touch disappointed because the author was quite negative--he kept saying how much he loved gardening, but then complained about the bugs and weeds and too abundant harvests, and the critters. Some things he brought on himself by trying not to spray for bugs, until it was too late, then he sprayed a lot, also he was gardening in the Hudson River Valley and he didn't want to put up a fence to keep out the deer--is t...more
Bill Alexander loves his backyard garden. Maybe a little more than average backyard gardner. The lengths he goes to, in order to protect it from critters, bugs, weeds, and from weather, often result in the humorous anecdotes he relates in this memoir. It's pretty clear that his garden is his pride and joy, his reason d'etre. His wife, his neighbors, and his co-workers all think he's a bit crazy. I think I might agree. Even he realizes that he has crossed the line. He is no hobby gardener, but a...more
"The $64 Tomato" is a light laugh out loud look at one man's over-the-top gardening obsession on his three acre property in New York's Hudson Valley. Though the title may lead one to believe this to be a story about trying to grow a few tomato plants and the headaches and costs incurred with even that simple task, this book is much more broader in scope then that.
The author, William Alexander, purchases a somewhat large piece of property in upstate New York and immediatly has delusions of garden...more
The author, William Alexander, purchases a somewhat large piece of property in upstate New York and immediatly has delusions of garden...more
I enjoyed reading this quite a bit. While I don't agree with a lot of his actions and the chapters were a little too formulaic, I learned a lot and had fun reading it.
Explanation: The title implies that he goes to extremes normal gardeners wouldn't, but that's not entirely true. He analyzes the dilemmas and challenges most "weekend farmers" grapple with and he may spend a bit more than some, but the 64 dollars is the price he calculated out from how much hard cash he spent over a decade on his...more
Explanation: The title implies that he goes to extremes normal gardeners wouldn't, but that's not entirely true. He analyzes the dilemmas and challenges most "weekend farmers" grapple with and he may spend a bit more than some, but the 64 dollars is the price he calculated out from how much hard cash he spent over a decade on his...more
of all the things gardening can do to you, the rarest seems to be inspire humorous self-assesment. this man is a gem. instead of some self-righteous monologue on the superiority of locavores and organics, glossy photos of the beauty his hands have wrought, his children eating off the fat of the land, and his wife as a piece of wallpaper, we have here the hilarious tale of a man, a family, and an obsession.
i have to point out that the tomato didn't really cost $64 dollars. he worked out his cost...more
i have to point out that the tomato didn't really cost $64 dollars. he worked out his cost...more
May 03, 2011
Amy Chan
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Anyone with any interest to gardening
One word: Hilarious!
The narrative of a gardener who wasn't really aware of the challenge he is taking on, hence hilarious events unfold. Love the slightly sarcastic but casual tone he took on.
It's easy to condemn the author for failing to stick with pro-organic, pro-animal, and pro-environmental style of gardening, but that is precisely the point that the book is trying to make. Those 3 pro may be easy for some depending on their garden size and experience, but not everyone. Gardening is not a...more
The narrative of a gardener who wasn't really aware of the challenge he is taking on, hence hilarious events unfold. Love the slightly sarcastic but casual tone he took on.
It's easy to condemn the author for failing to stick with pro-organic, pro-animal, and pro-environmental style of gardening, but that is precisely the point that the book is trying to make. Those 3 pro may be easy for some depending on their garden size and experience, but not everyone. Gardening is not a...more
William Alexander, you are a talented writer. In less capable hands, I probably would have dispensed with the book entirely or thrown it across the room. Unfortunately, that is about the only nice thing I can say because Mr. Alexander, you are a pompous boob.
The book itself is a train wreck of a tale about bourgeois "gentleman farmer" (the term gentleman farmer is his, not mine) who spends a fortune on the ideal of a garden that never quite realizes its Platonic form. Alexander spends less time...more
The book itself is a train wreck of a tale about bourgeois "gentleman farmer" (the term gentleman farmer is his, not mine) who spends a fortune on the ideal of a garden that never quite realizes its Platonic form. Alexander spends less time...more
5 likes · like · see review
This amusing title caught my eye at the library a few weeks ago and I zoomed through it in a matter of days. Alexander has a casual yet sophisticated writing style that really engaged me as I read about his adventures in morphing from a mere backyard gardener to a "gentleman farmer." He goes through the design and construction of their 22-bed vegetable garden and the ensuing "cultivating" (not weeding), pest-eradicating (look out deer & Superchuck), and harvesting that it requires. As we hav...more
I laughed out loud several times while reading this, and also couldn't help but read the section out loud to my fiancé about Red Delicious apples (and how much the author hates them, and why he cannot for the life of him understand why people choose to eat them. All I can say us: Amen, brother!)
All of that aside, I didn't love the book quite as much as I think I could have. At the end, he has no great epiphany, he doesn't come to any understanding about the way his life needs to interact with ga...more
All of that aside, I didn't love the book quite as much as I think I could have. At the end, he has no great epiphany, he doesn't come to any understanding about the way his life needs to interact with ga...more
The author and his wife decide to design a garden... Hilarity ensues. From the beginning, the garden's fraught with disaster, from "Superchuck," the uber-persistent groundhog, to the creepy Christopher Walken gardener.
Alexander takes us along on his 20-year gardening adventure. Even if he ultimately decides the garden fails as a business venture, (as the title implies), his love of gardening, and gratitude for the opportunity to learn shine through.
The book ranges from laugh out loud funny to s...more
Alexander takes us along on his 20-year gardening adventure. Even if he ultimately decides the garden fails as a business venture, (as the title implies), his love of gardening, and gratitude for the opportunity to learn shine through.
The book ranges from laugh out loud funny to s...more
I read this book a while ago, around the same time that I read "The Dirty Life" and "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle" (what can I say, gardening in all its forms interests me) and usually the hard edges get blurred after a while, but I think I actually dislike it more.
Normally it's fun to read about someone's trials and tribulations as they try out something new, but over and over I kept thinking "Why would you even DO that, are you dumb or something?" The fact that he never learns his lesson and c...more
Normally it's fun to read about someone's trials and tribulations as they try out something new, but over and over I kept thinking "Why would you even DO that, are you dumb or something?" The fact that he never learns his lesson and c...more
William Alexander devotes a chapter to each garden project. Just about everyone will be able to relate b/c each story chronicles his failures and frustrations with some catchy humor. I forgot i was reading this book until i realized, towards the end, how depressed Alexander must be. He thinks so lowly of his neighbors, his contractors and those around him that he must be only lonely smartest man in the world with all the answers-except when it comes to gardening. Often he comes across as judgmen...more
This book was hilarious! I felt that he epitomized everything that I have ever gone through when setting out to do some sort of big project. It seems like he takes 2 steps forward and 3 steps backwards. The only complaint that I had was his lack of up-to-date gardening methods and his anal-retentiveness for straight lines. He could have had a beautiful garden if he didn't insist on seeing his expensive dirt show in between his rows of tomatoes. For goodness sakes, plant some basil and marigolds...more
I've been wanting to read this book for years; so long, in fact, that I was surprised to see that it had been published in 2006! For some reason, I thought it had been around longer. This was a quick, enjoyable read, full of humor and good-natured appraisal of the author's own situation. I have sympathy for his discovery that gardening can become, not a relaxing activity, but an all-out battle against natural enemies of disease and animal pests. One of his most poignant moments was discovering t...more
Oh boy where do I start with this one. It was very entertaining, informative and just truthful. As a gardener I shared his emotional ups and downs of his garden journey - struggling with the organic approach, etc. I have experienced my own "Superchuck" of pests and nearly lost my mind in the process. However, gardening is more about the journey than the end result. Except for some truly hardcore gardeners, most of us can not live off what we grow but the journey sure is fun. Yes, a $64 Tomato, n...more
I compleatly enjoyed this book. It was lent to me by a fellow gardening friend who said that "any gardener will understand this..." And she was right.
The book chronicals the journey of a gardener. And all the adventures and misadventures. Family that doesn't understand, dirt that doesn't cooperate, critters that try to raid the crops, the battle against the critters, bugs, weeds, time, the delemia of what to do with everything now that you have a sucessfull garden...
I laughed out loud through ou...more
The book chronicals the journey of a gardener. And all the adventures and misadventures. Family that doesn't understand, dirt that doesn't cooperate, critters that try to raid the crops, the battle against the critters, bugs, weeds, time, the delemia of what to do with everything now that you have a sucessfull garden...
I laughed out loud through ou...more
The storytelling was somewhat engaging, however the author's quirks were so irksome that it made this read a bit painful. At times I wanted to pull him aside and tell him what an arse he is but, all I could do was roll my eyes and flip the page.
I wouldn't recommend it to just anyone because there were some boring parts but it was totally worth a read for me. He's kind of funny but then he'll go on about kinds of apple trees and I would sort of glaze over some. Still, I enjoyed it!
I can't remember where I saw this book recommended, but it was on my "to read" list, and when it popped up in the list of eBooks available at the library, I checked it out. It was a quick read and entertaining. I don't garden, but I admire people who do. William Alexander polks fun at himself and his garden obsession and ultimately realizes that something must give in his life. I liked it, but did not love it. I especially enjoyed his battles with animals, in particular the lowly ground hog. We...more
I had such high hopes for this in the first few pages. I didn't think it was negative (as several reviews imply), it's just that gardening IS difficult. It's full of setbacks. It never quite matches our dreams. That's not negativity, that's reality. Initially I related, I laughed...and then he started talking about pests. And that's where he lost me. A so-called environmentalist doesn't resort to malathion or diazinon under ANY circumstances. And for me, you cross the line when you can't coexist...more
The author’s father was gardener, my mother was a gardener. We both inherited the gardening gene. I laughed with recognition all through this very well written book. I never want to tally up the real costs of the food and flowers I grow. If an accountant ever required such a task from me, I would put all that effort and money into my basic needs to sustain life column.
Life without being covered frequently with good soil or being soaked by ill-placed hoses or, being sweaty and sunburned in the pu...more
Life without being covered frequently with good soil or being soaked by ill-placed hoses or, being sweaty and sunburned in the pu...more
Any time I'm trying to learn about a new topic (in this case, gardening), I try to find an interesting narrative story to draw me in and make me interested. Linguists say that we become interested and engaged in topics when we have existing neural connections to tie new information to. Because I have basically no gardening knowledge (aside from a failed garden last year), I decided to read this in order to get into it. It was pretty interesting, aside from the age of the gardener (middle-aged ma...more
That was fun. Bill Alexander is kind of an idiot and spends way too much time and money chasing a dream to become a "gentleman farmer" on his three acre home in New York. It is one disaster after another as fends off deer, groundhogs, sodworms, squirrels, beetles, contractors, snow, drought and his own inane ambitions as he struggles to maintain a large and ever-expanding kitchen garden. As the title suggests, he eventually calculates the cost of a single tomato, factoring yearly costs and amort...more
This gardening memoir is a fine object lesson about how a hobby or passion can become a burden or obsession. Alexander shows the progression from the idea of the garden, the expansion of the idea, the expansion of the expansion, and the realization that joy has become drudgery. Alexander is both humorous and self-deprecating. Those reviewers who focus their criticism on his switch from organic to non-organic pesticides make a useful point about garden practices but miss the focus of this particu...more
This book wasn't very long but it seemed to never end. I'd really like to give it 2.5 stars, put it right smack in the middle of "average."
I enjoyed reading the vignettes about the author's garden but got annoyed at the way he tried to apply his garden experiences to the rest of life. Fortunately, that didn't happen often. The garden he created is unrelatable to most people who dream of a backyard garden; he and his physician wife actually hired a landscape architect to design it! This sets the...more
I enjoyed reading the vignettes about the author's garden but got annoyed at the way he tried to apply his garden experiences to the rest of life. Fortunately, that didn't happen often. The garden he created is unrelatable to most people who dream of a backyard garden; he and his physician wife actually hired a landscape architect to design it! This sets the...more
Cute. But jeez, talk about privilege. I couldn't relate to a 16,000 dollar garden. Like the last book I read, I felt like this guy characterized his wife in a negative light for the sake of good storytelling. It annoys me. I expect that if I am reading a memoir or story-telling non-fiction, that the main character is the writer and everyone else is part of the story of the author. But WHY must these guys characterize their kids as cute and funny and their wives as road blocks or antagonists to t...more
As a lapsed gardener, I loved this book. William Alexander writes of his 2000 sq ft garden but it really feels like his work as a gentleman farmer is a metaphor for the way we all negotiate a long-term marriage. He regales us with tales about the idealistic dreams he had for the garden from its produce to its beauty. And then reality enters the picture! I found myself sighing for the days when I too spent evenings pickling excess zucchini and jarring baskets of tomatoes and then laughing at his...more
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
William Alexander is the author of the bestsellers "The $64 Tomato" and "52 Loaves: One Man's Relentless Pursuit of Truth, Meaning, and a Perfect Crust." The New York Times has said about him, "His timing and his delivery are flawless.""
Note: There are several authors by this name on Goodreads.
More about William Alexander...
Note: There are several authors by this name on Goodreads.
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
Mar 21, 2011 10:56pm