Winnetka man loves his tomatoes
Bill Anderson grew nearly 11,000 tomatoes last year. He isn't alone in his obsession.
Last year, Bill Anderson grew 10,990 tomatoes, not counting the ones consumed by Buster the Manchester terrier.
He picked the first two on May 2 and the last 11 on Oct. 4. Five months later, he planted the first of this year's seedlings.
Anderson and his wife, Christine Griego, don't have a back 40. They live with two dogs in a small house on a 6,500-square-foot lot in Winnetka. Aside from the tomato plants -- 34 last year -- there's some grass, a few trees, a few dozen rose bushes. But as you approach their house, there's no mistaking what's at the top of this food chain. The frontyard is full of tomatoes: along the sidewalk, in an area Anderson calls the koi pond, in pots by the front door. A small sign with a painting of a tomato hangs on the front door.
The backyard is ringed with tomato plants, some in the bright Valley sun much of the day, others shaded by a huge Ponderosa pine.
Still. Ten thousand nine hundred ninety tomatoes? How did Anderson even begin to know that?
He chronicled his obsession. Each morning of the tomato season he collected the ripe fruit and spread them out on his kitchen counter. He organized them by variety and entered the totals onto index cards stored in a cookie jar, for later transfer onto spreadsheets. And he ate tomatoes -- for snacks, in salads and sauces. He and Griego gave them away, fed them to friends. They froze tomatoes. Lots of them; in February, they still had frozen tomatoes to give away.
As the 2008 season began, Anderson figured he was on track to harvest around 15,000 tomatoes from 52 plants. That was about twice the number he and Griego intended to plant, but a friend gave them some seedlings, and they ended up with 16 more after volunteering at a plant sale. What could they do?
Anderson, 46, doesn't want people to think tomatoes are the center of his life. He has a job (software development); he has friends. He and Griego have been married for a year. Be that as it may, he is extraordinarily devoted to his tomatoes.
That doesn't make him unique. Not by a long shot.
"If you think that growing backyard tomatoes is just that, you're missing the point," said Scott Daigre, a garden designer whose Tomatomania seedling sale has become an intensely awaited kickoff to the season. "It's a search for the past, a romantic search for a memory, a hope of reliving a childhood experience, a great dinner."
