It's nice when you hear of your book 4200 miles away - a review from Alaska!

[NRaleighLiberal]

http://www.newsminer.com/features/sundays/gardening/for-truly-epic-tomatoes-pick-up-the-book-epic-tomatoes/article_55ab49be-42f5-11e5-9dd1-e7a22f47f3fe.html

I've also picked up some UK reviews this year. Hard to believe it's not been out 8 months yet! Got my second coming out in December - and about to get the contract done for book 3!

So happy to leave the corporate world behind...this is much more fun (if much less lucrative....I will take the trade any day!)

[DirkGently]

1. Cool. Happy publishing. n/t

[NRaleighLiberal]

2. thanks, folks. this is still quite new to me. every day seems to bring a surprise!

DU's support of my little hobby gone awry is much appreciated!

[DFW]

3. Nice going!

I'll get there some day (still need a serious publisher).

In the meantime, I'm keeping my day job, although I still have fun with my day job, so I probably wouldn't give that up no matter what.

[NRaleighLiberal]

4. I had 25 years in Pharma - they said "goodbye" and I was ready.

writing is now the second career - I am not retired, I've decided...busier than ever!

[DFW]

7. I just celebrated 40 years with my outfit last week

I figure another 40, and I'll probably be tired of it, too.

[peacebird]

5. What are books 2 & 3 about? Loved book 1! Twas Epic!

[NRaleighLiberal]

6. link to the second below - straw bale gardening. #3 -

focusing down on our unique world wide project to breed dwarf growing tomatoes - maybe touch on my other projects with breeding sweet peppers and eggplant. Proposal in development!

and thanks!

http://www.amazon.com/Growing-Vegetables-Straw-Bales-Harvests/dp/1612126146/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1439839818&sr=1-3&keywords=craig+lehoullier

[Chan790]

11. You have the best customer reviews I've ever seen for a book on Amazon...

for a book with more than a handful of reviews. Even your 4* reviews all basically say "the book is fantastic but I took off a star for decisions made by the publisher, not the author."

[NRaleighLiberal]

12. it is incredibly humbling. thanks for your comment.....

[Tab]

8. Good for you!

I hope it goes well. Be warned - they do go out of print (usually). I remember some of mine did well for many years, but ultimately I only found them on the "remaindered" cart outside the front of a Borders bookstore so it often goes full circle (sigh).

[2naSalit]

9. Congrats!!

Looks like some very good advice.. in your book.

I have had intermittent gardening experience and have become brave enough to try to grow tomatoes in a high latitude, high elevation location where it has been said this can't be done. So far, my three plants in a rudimentary hot house I got at a low-priced variety store (10mil mylar type) are looking pretty good and have several tomatoes in development and hopefully will ripen soon. It gets into the 30s at night lately so I have been using a couple techniques to keep them warm enough at night and seem to be succeeding so far! The seeds are from a company called "Seeds Trust" who have vegetable and herb seeds collected from all over the world, they have a high elevation/high latitude "bucket of seeds" that I got to try out. More seeds than I can plant in my tiny plot but some of the plants are doing well outside. The tomatoes are three varieties of "Siberian" tomatoes developed through cross pollination techniques for the geographic challenges of locations like mine. I've always had very successful crop in other locations but this Rocky Mountain location at 7K+ ft location is surely a challenge, can't get spinach to grow beyond a couple inches before it blooms out.

Anyway, love the tomatoes in your sig-line, and now I'll have to get your book. Thanks for writing it and letting us know about it.

Hope you have great success in your writing endeavors!

2na

[Blue_In_AK]

21. We have that issue with spinach, too.

I don't even try it anymore, but the Swiss chard and kale do well.

[2naSalit]

25. Thanks.

Good to know, I wasn't sure if I was doing something wrong. I had great success about 165 miles south of here but almost 2500ft lower in elevation. I'll try other greens next year, the beat, beans and peas do okay here as do the zucchini.

[Blue_In_AK]

26. it sounds like your crops are similar to ours.

We have really good luck with cabbage, broccoli, kale, lettuces, peas, beans (in hot years like this one), zucchini, Swiss chard, beets, carrots, potatoes. Things that require a long season like corn, winter squash, etc. are much more challenging. Some people pull it off, but it takes work. We always have gigantic pumpkins at our state fair, but when I tried to grow one a few years ago, all I got was about 15 feet of vine with a 2" diameter "pumpkin," that got nowhere near ripening. LOL.

[2naSalit]

27. That's funny...

I planted one summer squash in my rented plot in town and that things was taking over the whole thing so I had to hack it back, not sure the squash will even be edible, I had to yank out a bunch of the volunteer strawberries that came with the plot too. Now my other veggies are doing better but we've been getting frost the last week and a lot less oxygen thanks to being in the thick of the regional smoke plume. A very strange year, we even had snow a few weeks ago. Could be a brutal winter this time around... we'll see.

The squash story reminds me of a poem recited by Garrison Kiellor many years ago about reading a seed catalog in early spring and imagining the character of vegetable plants by their names in the catalog... one part mentioned a stringy vine that might grab you by the ankles and how one might have to strike it several times with a hoe to make it let go! It goes through my mind whenever I get near that squash plant in my rented plot!

[Blue_In_AK]

28. Here are some winners from last year's state fair

Mine don't quite match this.

[2naSalit]

30. Wow...

I have heard stories of huge veggies grown in AK but never saw pictures. My word. I think it might have to do with the endless days in the summer.

[tomm2thumbs]

10. Super!!!! Really fun and your labor of love is bearing fruit!

literally.... !!!!

[NRaleighLiberal]

13. fruit...or is it a vegetable?

[mopinko]

14. it is not only a good book, it is a beautiful book. designers did fantastic job.

proud to be the owner of a signed copy. and a lot of tomatoes.

[NRaleighLiberal]

15. .

[mopinko]

16. .

[allan01]

17. bravo

shortest message exchange ever between a writer and his publisher : writer ? publisher !

[aquart]

18. Congratulations on these hard-earned moments of pure joy.

[Worried senior]

19. I plan on getting the

straw bale gardening book. We are having more and more trouble bending over so that should work better for us.

[Blue_In_AK]

20. That's awesome.

I actually have tomatoes ripening on the vines in my greenhouse this year, which is a first. Usually, I have to bring in the green ones in September to ripen on the windowsill. They're nothing fancy, baby Romas, but I have a steady supply of ripe ones.

A friend of mine in SF collects tomato seeds and gave me a bunch of short- season ones to try next year.

[NRaleighLiberal]

22. let me know if you want to try the new short growing ones from our project

that were worked on and named by two of my Alaskan gardening friends! Arctic Rose, Iditarod Red, Yukon Quest and Sleeping Lady - all early, prolific, tasty - and quite large! up to 8 ounce tomatoes on 3 foot tall plants.

[Blue_In_AK]

23. Those sound great,

especially the height. I usually try to get determinates, but they still end up reaching into the far corners of the little greenhouse. Too much nitrogen?

[NRaleighLiberal]

24. no, just wrong classification. There are few true determinates -

Taxi, Sophie's Choice, Southern Nights come to mind.

DU mail me your mailing address - I will get some out to you within a few weeks.

the project is described here - http://nctomatoman.weebly.com/dwarf-tomato-project.html

[Blue_In_AK]

29. That project looks very cool,

and I would love to try some of those Alaska varieties. It looks like we're going to continue to have warmer summers up here for the foreseeable future, so tomatoes will be easier to grow. I'm still not confident enough to put them out in the open air, but my little greenhouse is a good option. I've had great luck with my peppers this summer, too - cayenne, salsa, Thai and jalapeño.

[Blue_In_AK]

31. I want to buy your book!

I just read the reviews on Amazon - WOW!

Do you recommend hard cover?

[LeftishBrit]

32. Great! - congratulations!