The $64 Tomato
Printed From: The BaitShop
Category: The Library
Forum Name: The BSBookClub
Forum Description: Discuss books you are currently reading here. All types of books, whether related to the outdoors or not, are welcome. Post title, author, publication date etc. in your opening post!
URL: http://www.baitshopboyz.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=19132
Printed Date: 26 March 2026 at 21:09
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Topic: The $64 Tomato
Posted By: rivet
Subject: The $64 Tomato
Date Posted: 24 January 2010 at 05:45
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An awesome book, professionally described as "How one man nearly lost
his sanity, spent a fortune and endured an existential crisis in the
quest for the perfect garden" Mrs Rivet gave me the harback version a couple years ago for Christmas and I loved every page of it. About this time of year I, and am sure a lot of others, are starting to get a bit of cabin fever and thiinking about the spring garden! Seed catalogues come in the mail everyday and I'm really looking forward to playing in the dirt! Anyway, incredibly funny and well written, William Alexander lives in NY state and gets the gardening bug. Over the years his battles with deer (whom his neighbours feed), squirrels (whom he feeds via his garden), grounhogs, worms and weeds nearly drive him to insanity and endless expense on the next miracle gadget to combat nature and actually get to eat his produce. After many years of torment he tallies up the total and finds out his Brandywine tomato he finally got to eat cost him $64...... Some of the best passages are his installation of an electrified fence and the masochistic woodchuck who endures daily electrocution to eat the lettuce, as well as his purchase of a "have a heart" trap with which to trap and not kill the animal and later causes him to rename it "Have a heart-attack trap". Delicious! He keeps sayng "maybe we need more voltage" and his wife keeps replying "maybe you need more brain cells"  Published by Algonquin Books, 2007. It is available in paperback now. You can find it at amazon here: http://www.amazon.com/64-Tomato-Fortune-Endured-Existentia l/dp/1565125576 -------------  FIRE IS OUR FRIEND!
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Replies:
Posted By: mountainrose
Date Posted: 24 January 2010 at 12:50
| This book looks like a good one. Thanks. I come from a long line of gardeners. |
Posted By: deaddog
Date Posted: 24 January 2010 at 16:15
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I've bought a few Savage's for less than $64 and they made just as good a tomato stake as the rest of them... DD ------------- Endeavor to persevere. |
Posted By: chikee
Date Posted: 24 January 2010 at 18:21
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Excellent review, Rivet! I will check my local library. If not, amazon.com, here I come! Thanks for posting! ------------- -Chikee |