NONFICTION - Sept. 8, 1996

IN PRAISE OF TOMATOES: A Year in the Life of a Home Tomato Grower by Steven L. Shepherd (HarperCollins: $22, 244 pp.). Steven Shepherd grew up in Davis, Calif., home of Calgene and the famous square tomato. “I have,” he writes, “been sent into the world with tomatoes in my heart and tomatoes in my blood.” There’s also a little bit of the square tomato in his blood, for while most gardeners who divulge their passion for the sport on paper eschew most if not all of the modern conveniences of gardening (chemicals, ultra-commercial varieties, ego-infested competitions), Shepherd wholeheartedly supports the dreaded pesticide Roundup, Better Boy tomatoes and the proud display of fruits the size of soccer balls (even if they are reluctantly given away to the neighbors). This is a suburban tomato grower, a cozy low-brow, which means we don’t have to move to the middle of nowhere, we don’t have to devote our lives to finding alternatives to pesticides, to share Shepherd’s delight and purity of heart.