A man's north Eugene garden overflows with fruit at harvest time.

Byline: Susan Palmer The Register-Guard

Lloyd Bowers planted the seed way back in February in a flat by a sunny window at his granddaughter's house.

Now he's reaping what he sowed all those months back. Giant heirloom tomatoes are growing on a vine in his backyard so heavy with fruit that it's staked up with a 2-by-4.

The biggest tomato he has harvested so far: a 2-pound, 1.6-ounce beauty about 18 inches in circumference.

Bowers stood beaming with the tomato cupped in both hands in the tidy garden Tuesday.

"My grandfather has the greenest thumb in the world," granddaughter Janette Vanholsbeke said as she cut into a smaller tomato from the same vine.

Bowers lives with Vanholsbeke but maintains a garden behind granddaughter Kathy Clark's house in north Eugene. At 89, he is long since retired from the berry farm in Junction City he once owned. But he still gardens.

"I'd go crazy if I didn't have something to do," he said.

He also grows several varieties of butterfly bushes and fuchsias, which he occasionally offers for sale.

The tomatoes are just for family to enjoy, however. The giant heirlooms produce a meaty fruit, sweet and succulent. Bowers likes them fresh off the vine with a touch of salt.

The vine came from seed he saved from last year's harvest, he said. The secret to growing big tomatoes: lots of water and fertilizer, he said.

While Bower's big boy is impressive, it's no record for Lane County, where gardeners occasionally produce 3-pound tomatoes, said Pat Patterson, coordinator for the Lane County Extension Service's master gardener program.

But Bowers outdid the winner at this year's Oregon State Fair, where the biggest tomato weighed a mere 1 pound, 8 ounces.

"It's very respectable," Patterson said. "He did a good job."