Comments on: Fifty Dollar Tomato

By: John Willson

John Willson — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 13:02:11 +0000

Mitzi,
See, you know some…stuff. One in a million. The guy who was our county agricultural extension agent tells me that I’ve overunderestimated–that most “urban gardeners” probably will get the first few tomatoes for about $75 each. It’s like the urban golfer. The first putt that falls in the cup probably cost a couple of grand. Your story sounds like somebody who already knew some…stuff before ever dreaming tomato dreams.

By: Texan Exile

Texan Exile — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 22:56:05 +0000

Fantastic – the more people know about the great Guy Clark the better. Can’t think of a better antidote to what passes for “country” music these days.

I know what this country needs –

Guy Clark’s records in every iPod you see.

By: D.W. Sabin

D.W. Sabin — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 17:04:31 +0000

Well, by the looks of the big photo in the N.Y. Times yesterday of a young Chinese Male swooning over an Blinged-out Escalade at a Chinese Auto Show, where Chinese consumption of cars now exceeds American consumption…and the American manufacturers are holding their own there…but it would seem that even money can be bet on the prospect of our Inscrutable Banker enjoying well-soiled and watered America as her garden plot….thus introducing your students to the many steamy pleasures of Tenant Farming.

Interesting Times in America

By: Mitzi

Mitzi — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 01:10:28 +0000

Really? $50 a tomato? Maybe for the gourmet. All I needed was some lime and fertilizer to balance my kooky urban clay, some dug in leaves and home-generated vegetable compost (just pile it out back and let the beetle grubs and slugs have at it), a roll of fencing for tomato cages (received as a delightful Christmas present), some salvaged wood for stakes (people are always leaving sticks and discarded wood from remodels along the sidewalks for trash pickup in the neighborhood), tools (we had pick, shovel, and rake already), and a $2 one-time investment in a non-hybrid seed from a variety often sold at the farmer’s market, so I know it does well around here. I grew the seedlings in tomato cans and discarded plastic pots from a neighbor. I save money on gym memberships and emotional health (ain’t nothin’ better than hacking a large bush to bits, grubbing out the roots, and replacing it with something wonderful to eat when life gets frustrating). You can go on vacation by picking off the larger green ones and letting them slow-ripen indoors while you are gone, or letting a neighbor pick them to keep (the most hardened urbanite can find the RED ones, and people with kids often like the easter-egg-hunt aspect). Corn, on the other hand, waits for no man, and requires some expertise in recognizing the optimal moment.
Yeah, it is work, but you’d be vegging on the couch in front of a glowing rectangle, anyway, and is THAT worth your hourly wage compared to red/yellow/purple globes of acidic goodness?
I did meet a few tomato hornworms in my backyard jungle this year, but some hand picking and drowning in soapy water took care of that. They were always posing at the top of the plants in the evening as if to show off their destructive handiwork. Destructive, but dumb.
By the end of a normal hot, dry summer in TN, those tomatoes are a few cents apiece and your windowsills and countertops are overflowing from a few plants. You don’t even have to weed, as indeterminate vines drown out all competition. Even this year, I still have window-sills full ripening in December! If you have too many you can throw them, whole and raw, in gallon-size zipper bags in the freezer to cook down for sauce on a winter afternoon when the house needs some humidity. Well worth growing, even just in a pot or a small flower-bed. $50 a tomato? Not in my yard.

By: Marianne

Marianne — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 19:33:27 +0000

I now have Guy Clark down as #162 on the list of reasons I should be ashamed to be ashamed to be from West Texas. His story is especially convicting: he hails from Monahans, a neighbor town of my own, Odessa. We Odessans, when considering the tragic misfortune of growing up where we did, often console ourselves with the knowledge that Monahans is so much crappier.

Tomatoes are not easy to grow in West Texas. Neither are people. I’ve learned in the last few years that this was not always so.

By: JS Bangs

JS Bangs — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 16:41:32 +0000

I don’t really like tomatoes, so I’ll save myself the trouble. I might try to grow sweet corn and rhubarb, though–rather less taxing than tomatoes, I think.