By Kira Hamman

Looking for a good book to pass the time until the tomatoes are ripe?

Try these:

100 Heirloom Tomatoes for the American Garden, by Carolyn Male
This book from Smith & Hawken is, according to Amazon, “for the true tomato snob.” Well, that would be me. Male gives excellent assessments of the relative strengths of the varieties she features, plus tons of information on culture and, of course, mouth-watering photos.

In Praise of Tomatoes, by Ronni Lundy
From tomato history to tomato pop culture and everything in between. Brush up on your tomato trivia!

Grow the Best Tomatoes, by John Page
The Storey guide to growing tomatoes. Storey’s guides are simple, straightforward, and reasonably complete. Plus, Read the rest of this entry »

By Michelle Fabio

In Part I of our Holiday Book Recommendations, we talked about books with tomato gardening tips and in Part II, about tomato memoirs—now it’s time to get cooking. Here are some tomato cookbooks you or your tomato lover might enjoy:

• The Heirloom Tomato Cookbook by Mimi Luebbermann

In this cookbook, Luebbermann, who has written nearly 20 books on gardening and cooking, offers not only delicious recipes and great photographs by Robert Holmes, she also includes information on the top 25 heirloom varieties, including growing tips and seed-purchasing information. Among the 50 recipes are Gazpacho with Cucumber Salsa Verde, Cheese and Pesto Fondue with Tomato-Focaccia Skewers, and Grilled Sea Bass with Lemon-Oregano and Tomato Relish.

• The Tomato Festival Cookbook: 150 Recipes that Make the Most of Your Crop of Lush, Vine-Ripened, Sun-Warmed, Fat, Juicy, Ready-to-Burst Heirloom Tomatoes by Lawrence Davis-Hollander

Publishers Weekly says “Davis-Hollander’s first book brings together familiar preparations, like tomato sauce and ratatouille, with contemporary restaurant innovations like Read the rest of this entry »

By Michelle Fabio

As the holiday season creeps up on us, you may be looking for the perfect gift for the tomato gardener in your life. There are plenty of books out there on how to garden and we told you about them in Part I, but here are three books written for gardeners by gardeners with firsthand tales of their tomato trials and tribulations:

• 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 by William Alexander

Lauded by Publishers Weekly as a “hilarious horticultural memoir,” The $64 Tomato recounts Alexander’s experience with growing a vegetable garden and orchard in the Hudson Valley. As a telling example of how things went for Alexander, he begins his journey organically-obsessed but ends up covering his entire property in pesticides when he finds himself in a battle against just about everything he comes across.

Your favorite tomato gardener may just find solace in Alexander’s own troubles—and humor dealing with them.

• Blithe Tomato by Mike Madison

Madison is a subsistence farmer in California with more than 20 years experience in the local farmers’ market scene. Blithe Tomato is a collection of essays on Madison’s Read the rest of this entry »

By Michelle Fabio

Maybe you’re not thinking about next year’s growing season just yet, but there’s no reason you can’t get a start on learning some new tips—and that goes for your favorite tomato gardener as well.

Here are 5 books that can help you get started, and they make great gifts for the holiday season to boot!

• Giant Tomatoes by Marvin H. Meisner

Published just a few months ago, this is reportedly the first book to deal specifically with growing, you guessed it, giant tomatoes. Don Langevin, author of How-to-Grow World Class Giant Pumpkins I, II, & III, says, “This is the most comprehensive treatment ever written on giant tomatoes.”

• How to Grow World Record Tomatoes: A Guinness Champion Reveals His All-Organic Secrets by Charles Wilber

Wilber is in the Guinness Book of World Records because he harvested 1,368 pounds of tomatoes from just four plants; if you’re interested in Read the rest of this entry »

By Michelle Fabio

Through the lyrical words of Demian Elainé Yumei and the beautiful illustrations of Nicole Tamarin, Little Yellow Pear Tomatoes provides parents with a way to introduce children to gardening and tomatoes as well as to life’s processes and how elements work together.

In 32 full-color pages, we follow a young girl’s realization as to just how many “not-a-tomato” things go into creating the yellow pear tomatoes that her father plants for her (because she loves them so much, of course).

Read the rest of this entry »

By Danny Thompson

[This article is part 5 of a 5 article series. View part 1 of the series.]

Wrapping Up

This is the final part of our series on Tim Ferriss’s book, the 4 Hour Work Week.

I’d like to throw out few disclaimers and explain a few things that might have confused some.

First off, The 4-Hour Workweek, as a title, shouldn’t be taken literally.

For some, 4 hours per week seems like too much time to spend in the garden. No problem.

The goal is to spend as little time on the unsavory bits and as much on the parts you delight in as possible.

Read the rest of this entry »