CHICAGO — Air. Water. Tomatoes. For Bob Zeni, a suburban LaGrange Park man who has dedicated the past 11 years to cultivating and selling hundreds of varieties of tomato plants, these are the basic elements of life.
Zeni is known for growing and selling thousands of tomato starters every spring, allowing Chicago gardeners to get a leg up on the growing season while trying out unique varieties of the plants.
This year’s online sale starts 10 a.m. Thursday. Plants cost $6-$15 and can be picked up in person at one of 33 pop-ups at 17 locations on weekends from April 26 to June 8. This year will also see the addition of nine new pick-up spots, including pop-ups in Fulton Market, the Loop, South Loop and West Town.
As Zeni’s sales increase, so do his donations. Last year, after selling out his lot of 10,000 plants, Zeni donated about 1,000 plants to churches, schools, nonprofits and community gardens that give their harvests to food pantries.
“I sell plants so I can donate plants,” Zeni said.
This year, the stakes are higher: Zeni hopes to sell 15,000 plants, which would allow him to donate about 1,500, he said. His goal is to create “self-sufficiency in areas of the city and suburbs that lack access to fresh food.”
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The sale will feature 187 varieties of beefsteaks, saladettes, cherries and pea-sized tomatoes, including 36 varieties new to the sale such as Copper Olive, Garnet, Showstopper and Eye Candy, all first-year releases. Also new to the sale is the Inciardi tomato, a historical local variety dating to 1898 when Enrico Inciardi immigrated to suburban Downers Grove from Sicily with his family’s tomato seeds in tow.
Varieties come in a range of sizes, from hanging basket to dwarf to standard. Most will be 6-8 inches tall by pickup time, depending on the variety.
There are also 18 tabletop varieties, which only mature to about 14 inches tall, making them a solid option people gardening in apartments or condos with balconies.
Zeni has been growing tomatoes at home for 25 years — a hobby-turned-obsession after experiencing the life-changing joy of a truly good heirloom tomato. That’s when he realized there was something better than the tomatoes he’d known from grocery stores.
“I’d always disliked, downright hated, those tasteless travesties that supermarkets claim are tomatoes,” he said. “My mission is to help all Chicagoans experience the flavor and glory of handpicked, homegrown, vine-ripened heirloom tomatoes.”
Zeni set out to grow a better tomato. For the first four or five years, he he made “every mistake that I think you can make,” he said. But with persistence, he eventually grew a successful batch of Green Zebra tomatoes.
“At the end of the year, when it started producing, we picked it and … tasted it, and it was a revelation,” he said. “It was like, ‘Who knew this is the way tomatoes were supposed to taste?’”
Zeni said he was shocked, describing that first tomato as “the most fantastic thing I’ve ever tasted.”
“Maybe I should try more,” he remembers thinking.
Originally, Zeni gave his plants away to neighbors. But then the requests started rolling in. About 11 years ago, he started selling plants, scaling up from dozens to hundreds to thousands of tomato plants in his first few years. Distribution that used to happen in his driveway now takes place at more than 30 locations across the city and suburbs.
“Clearly, others are looking for an alternative to big-box stores that all sell the same ordinary, boring varieties of tomato plants,” he said.
Dubbed by neighbors as “the Tomato Man,” Zeni used to host a one-day sale where people would come from other states to pick up plants.
In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, Zeni and his daughter, Rebecca, resorted to making hundreds of deliveries. In 2021, his daughter had ChicagoTomatoMan.com created as a Father’s Day gift. Zeni can now sell pre-orders online, as well as offer advice and information on growing.
That same year, Zeni started offering pop-up pick-up locations across the Chicago area, with a goal of selling 1,800 plants. By 2024, with the help of Rebecca and his wife, Wendy, Zeni sold 10,000 in one season.
While Zeni’s wife makes a mean tomato quiche, he prefers to snack on them straight off the vine, savoring the “shockingly sweet” fresh flavor. He doesn’t use herbicides, chemical growth treatments or pesticides. His care regimen consists of “just a lot of tender loving care” — plus plenty of “good soil, good sun, good seeds and plenty of water,” he said.
Zeni’s success has allowed him to support organizations like the Gardeneers, a Chicago-based nonprofit that works with Chicago Public Schools to create and care for school gardens while students learn about eating well.
Zeni will also sell his plants at other events this spring, including Tomatopalooza April 26 at The Roof Crop/Maxwell’s Trading in Fulton Market; and at Pints, Plants & Pups May 10 at Off Color Brewing Taproom in Lincoln Park. He’ll have samples of his tomatoes on display Aug. 23-24 at Heirloomfest at the Chicago Botanic Garden in north suburban Glencoe to mark the end of the season.
Zeni suggests skeptics and first-time growers at least give his plants a try. But be warned.
“They should be a little cautious,” he said. “Because once they start, it could become an obsession.”
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