The gift of growing an absurd amount of tomatoes

There’s something miraculous about starting a tomato from seed. A tiny seed that sprouts into a little seedling in March becomes a six-foot-tall plant that can produce dozens of tomatoes through September. Such natural abundance, all from a single plant.

But what about starting 30 tomatoes and 10 peppers from seed (and planting them in your small backyard plot)? Is that still a miracle of abundance, or an unhinged act that merits a welfare check from family and friends?

This is not a hypothetical scenario, for I am the Tomato King ™ of 2026. And I’m here to say: I am fine. Everything is fine. In fact, I am more than fine. In fact, the single best thing I did this year — both for myself and my neighborhood — was plant all those damn tomatoes. In tending to those tomatoes, I took on a daily responsibility that forced me to literally touch grass and put my hands in dirt. And, in sharing the sheer abundance of our harvest, I spurred a mini gift exchange among neighbors that I could’ve never anticipated.

My tomato glow-up started from a humble place. You see, earlier this year, I’d been referring to myself as a “Zooman” (a term I coined in the award-winning poem pictured below). But the process of nurturing my absurd amount of tomatoes snapped me out of my Zooman nature by connecting me with actual nature. I began looking forward to getting my hands dirty on Saturdays. First, it was transferring the growing plants to larger pots of soil. Then, it was digging 40-plus holes and planting my 40-plus tomatoes and peppers directly in the ground. And, later, as the plants grew, it was staking, tying, and pruning the stems and arms as they shot skyward and outward.

I’d be 20 feet away from where I take my Zoom calls, but I was occupying an entirely different spiritual dimension. On the computer, my work was abstract, my impact was questionable, and most days were a fuzzy, flimsy blur of two-dimensional docs and faces. But out in the garden, my progress was tangible, and my care was needed, and my hours would just melt away into an effortless effort of flow. I was becoming a modest participant in the timeless dance between body, earth, and bounty. I was an average dancer, at best, but still.

And, indeed, we had a bounty. In fact, we ended up with so many tomatoes and peppers that our only option was to share most of what we harvested, lest they go to waste. Every few days, after each harvest, I’d drop gift bags full of different varieties of tomatoes and peppers on our neighbors’ porches. We hosted a tomato tasting party with some of our neighbors in late-July, and we hosted several dinners where our tomatoes played a starring role. When friends would stop by, they’d leave with tomatoes. And when we were out of town for a few weeks, we created a group chat inviting our neighbors to stop by our backyard and pick whichever tomatoes and peppers they’d like. I had several moments of joy when, after we returned from our trip, I “caught” neighbors with their little kids gleefully picking tomatoes from our garden (and occasionally falling onto our tomato plants).

What came next was completely unexpected: Our neighbors started giving us gifts. One of our neighbors started making weekly deliveries of egg cartons full of figs from his fig tree. Another neighbor, who once had a juice business, started dropping off homemade batches of the best almond and cashew milk I’ve ever tasted. Another neighbor gave us a very nice bookshelf that they no longer had a need for. Seemingly every day, I’d open our front door and find a new gift on the porch. Without trying, we kicked off a gift exchange between us and our neighbors that has continued well past the peak of tomato season.

In hindsight, none of this could’ve happened — neither the life-giving process of cultivating the garden, nor the gift-giving that followed — had we not planted the absurd number of tomatoes we did.

Had I only grown a few tomatoes and peppers, I’d likely check in on them every now and then, but not much more than that. Only by planting tomatoes and peppers at the scale of a small family farm was I able to relate to my plants as if I were a small family farmer. Doing your part to help 40 plants flourish requires daily responsibilities. Most mornings, the first thing I’d do was prune the spotting leaves of a tomato plant and harvest whichever tomatoes were ripening. Most evenings, the last thing I’d do was water the plants and pick a few more tomatoes. Most weekends, I’d get after a set of tasks that would allow me to put on my floral-forward gardening sleeves, turn on Meek Mill’s “Dreams and Nightmares” or Metallica’s “Enter Sandman,” and get lost in the garden for hours.

And, had I only grown a few tomatoes and peppers, I’d have likely kept most of them to myself. Only by growing way more tomatoes than we needed was I able to turn around and give the excess away as gifts. In this sense, the gift of nature’s abundance had a cascading effect. My giving came from a place of generosity unbounded by obligation or expectation: I was simply so astounded by the gifts I’d received — the volume of the bounty, the tastiness of the tomatoes — that I couldn’t help but share them with others. My neighbors seemed to feel the same, and they couldn’t help but continue to pass along the gift — all part of a virtuous cycle that started with seed and soil.

It’s now been three mornings that I’ve been staring at my computer screen trying to figure out how to cleanly close this piece, and I’m realizing that I can’t leave you thinking this year was all sunshine and tomatoes. That’s because our tomato maximalism, in retrospect, was a barely subconscious response to a dark cloud hanging over our young marriage. Infertility.

When I started this year’s garden with my wife, Natalie, we had already passed the 12-month mark of trying, unsuccessfully, to get pregnant. Seemingly every month, another friend was getting pregnant, and we were not. Infertility was becoming a monthly reminder that what we wanted most in life was, inexplicably, just beyond our reach.

What was within our reach, however, was the garden plot in our backyard and the garden store just around the corner. So, while our friends and neighbors were getting pregnant, we were planting tomato seeds. While our friends and neighbors were becoming consumed with parenting responsibilities, we were throwing ourselves into our gardening responsibilities. And while our friends and neighbors were sharing pics of their babies, we were sharing pics of all our tomatoes — and, let the record show that we ended up with way more tomatoes than they had babies.

But life, it turns out, is full of surprises. Just as our tomato plants were starting to bear fruit this summer, we learned that Natalie was pregnant. Then, as our tomatoes were reaching their peak, we found out she was pregnant with, wait for it, twins. It’s a high-risk situation, and a lot is still uncertain, but, regardless, it is a true gift of abundance.

It is also probably a sign that my reign as Tomato King should come to an end. So, if you hear me talking about planting 30 tomatoes and 10 peppers next spring, please do conduct a welfare check.