The $64 Tomato, a cautionary and humorous gardening tale by William Alexander, should be mandatory reading for anyone who yearns to buy a large property and build their “dream garden.” The clever subtitle: “How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden,” speaks of the troubles to come but should have included, “And Nearly Ruined His Health.” His endless battles with cranky workers, pests, and plant diseases remind us how hard it is to plan a “low maintenance garden,” be a committed organic gardener and to treat humanely all the animals poised to eat your tomatoes the day before they ripen. 
Here in the Southwest we should all kiss our adobe soil (which can be amended) and revel in the absence of deer, groundhogs, funguses, squash vine borers, Japanese beetles and grass to name just a few of Alexander’s gardening nemeses. Nonetheless, this tomato colored book is a celebration of gardening mania at its best. In the last chapter, the author thoughtfully answers the question, “why we garden.” The reader will pick up many a horticultural tip along the way.
The author, a research director, and his wife Jane, a full time physician, move into what is notoriously known in their small New England town as “The Big Brown House,” with their two teenagers. They purchase the old pile for its charm and character, which translates into “it needs a lot of work.” Their landscape architect plans a vegetable garden the size of Yankee Stadium in a field that was in fact known as, “the baseball field”, before being converted into a mammoth set of rectangular raised beds with lovely bluegrass in between. A wildflower meadow which turns out not to be as easy as scattering seeds and a pest prone heirloom fruit orchard follow. His family trip to Bandelier just as the famous controlled burn goes out of control nixes his decision to burn off his own meadow.
First mistake: The architect talks them out of gravel between the beds because, of course, she is not going to have to mow it, deal with the grubs that are the aftermath of a Japanese beetle invasion or constantly weed the invidious new sprouts that threaten to take over the space meant for vegetables. She is only concerned with aesthetics not future maintenance. As his neighbor, Larry, laconically states, “Gonna be a lot of weeding.” An epic war with weeds introduces us to mulch and the shuffle hoe. Alexander who enjoys the feel of the soil and hence never wears gloves, likens the use of plastic mulch to “having sex wearing a condom.” He compares weeding to constantly repainting the George Washington Bridge, and never quite banishes the weeds because, in this reviewers opinion, he doesn’t use the right kind of mulch.
The writer struggles with pests and diseases and the processing of crops that year after year seem to ripen all at once. August finds Bill and Jane up past midnight canning peaches and making peach sauce while he suspects “that outside in the dark, peaches were ripening faster than we were processing.” This constant march from garden to kitchen will seem familiar to any vegetable gardener like me who buys a FoodSaver and whose shelves bulge with canning jars (where are those lids?). Alexander shares stratagems for sneakily bestowing excess bounty on neighbors and friends until he finally finds the local food bank. Hurrah!
Harvest time arrives and so do the deer, squirrels and a groundhog nicknamed “Superchuck” for his ability to withstand the charges from an electrical fence which our hero is always tweaking and upgrading. The battle with Bambi and various fruit and vegetable gourmand rodents would have been more amusing if the author had not decided to simply let a possum die in a trap because he was too afraid to remove it. (He later liberates a very dehydrated beast.) Has he never heard of calling Animal Control? My hair practically stood on end when this “NPR-supporting, recycling, compost-making,” natural fiber wearing guy resorts in desperation to soaking his grub laden lawn (next to the vegetable beds) with diazinon which he admits has since been taken off the market.
Gradually the garden transforms itself from a source of pleasure to “a pain in the neck” forcing the author to regroup, downsize and give us a delightful chapter on why he persists in this back breaking (he develops a herniated disc), and expensive pursuit. It’s the food followed by a sort of mystic connection with nature and the chance it gives us every year to start over, a phenomenon he calls, “garden amnesia.” Towards the end he calculates the cost of one Brandywine tomato – you guessed it, $64.
Recipes included.