Garden Detective

UPDATE: Already in the lead, Uresh has come forward with a 2 lb., 2 oz. Burpee Porterhouse.

Uresh Sheth of Syosset is a relative newcomer to the vegetable-growing community, having grown tomatoes and other crops for only one season prior to this summer. Call it beginner's luck if you will, but the man's plants are seven feet tall -- and "so heavy with fruit that the plants tipped over onto the asparagus plants despite being staked!" he boasts.

He's growing 20 tomato plants in his Syosset garden. Varieties include Porterhosue, Supersteak, Belgian Giant and Fresh Salsa, which he purchased from the Burpee website, and San Marzano, Mortgage Lifter and German Pink, which he bought at Hicks Nurseries in Westbury.

"I went a little nuts this year," says Sheth, 40, adding, "I think next year I'm going to scale it back to about 10 plants."

Recipe for success

Before planting in mid-May, Sheth, a busy father of two who works as a bond structurer for a broker dealer in Connecticut, tilled in a generous helping of bone meal and tomato plant food he ordered from the Garden's Alive! website. He tossed in a couple of bags of compost from Hicks for good measure. "I've been spraying the plants with liquid fertilizers as well as applying natural insecticides and fungicides, which I also got from Garden's Alive.com."

His diligence is beginning to pay off. "I'm just starting to get a few medium-sized tomatoes that have ripened," he says, "and I expect the coming weeks to bring a huge haul!"