I expanded my garden this year. I planted six tomato plants instead of two.
And after doing battle with a relentless groundhog and a legion of green hornworms, I managed a very nice harvest. (OK, I'm not ready to open a roadside stand, but there have been more than a few BLTs.)
Anyone who has ever tried to grow their own vegetables will get a chuckle from William Alexander's "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." (This book would make great winter reading. You know, right before the seed catalogs arrive.)
Alexander's adventures were on a much larger scale than mine. He actually had someone design his vegetable garden. But he had to plant it and weed it. And, like me, contend with varmints.
An electric fence shocks everyone, but doesn't keep out the deer and groundhogs it was erected to deter. Growing organic apples turns out to be easier said than done. A lack of bumblebees forces Alexander to pollinate his own trees. Weeds grow like . . . well, weeds. And when the harvest finally comes in, he discovers that ripe fruit waits for no man.
One day, Alexander sits down to figure out what it actually cost him to grow one of his lovely, heirloom Brandywine tomatoes and comes up with $64 each.
My brother loved to garden. If someone had asked him if he ever figured out how much his tomatoes cost him to grow, he would have just smiled and said, "You don't put a price tag on something you love to do."
William Alexander's book: priceless.
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