about being a good candidate for a husband.

In due time, Curtis puts up a sign in front of the tomatoes that says "Lateesha's Tomatoes." All of his work is rewarded when he catches sight of Lateesha looking down at the sign he has just made.

Paul Fleischman's novel Seedfolksis set up as a series of vignettes which tell the stories of thirteen individuals. All of the individuals in this novel are connected by a community garden that is started by a young Vietnamese girl who wants to connect with her father. Kim's father died eight months before she was born. She hopes that by planting beans in a vacant lot, her father will see and know that she is his daughter.

This simple act by the young girl inspires a neighborhood to plant various things for various reasons in the vacant lot. Curtis is the seventh character readers meet after Kim. His motivation for planting in the garden is his ex-girlfriend, Lateesha. He plants tomatoes in the vacant lot because he knows how much she likes tomatoes. Curtis is a self-described buff young black man who gets a lot of attention from the ladies. Lateesha was a few years older than he was, and she wanted to get serious. He wasn't ready for that and ended up cheating on Lateesha. She broke up with him after finding out. Here is what Curtis says about his motivation to plant the tomatoes: 

You don't know what you got till it's gone. All that was five years ago. I've caught up with her now. Done fooling around. She was looking for a husband, and now I'm looking for a wife. But when I came up to her on the street, she turned her back. Wouldn't let me explain. Twice it happened. No chance for words. So I decided to give her some deeds instead.

Curtis finds beefsteak tomatoes because he remembers Lateesha really loved them. He labels his tomatoes with a sign that says, "Lateesha's tomatoes."

In Seedfolks, the character, Curtis, is a pretty self-centered young man who spent a lot of time building up his muscles to look sharp.  He is nicknamed, “Ceps” because of his muscular biceps and build. After working in the garden and seeing it start to grow, Curtis realizes Lateesha, a girl he use to date, doesn’t really know him. His work in the community garden has changed him, and he regrets that their relationship ended.  In hopes of winning her back, he plants tomatoes to show his caring side.  His egotistical attitude is gone, and he truly wants to prove himself to Lateesha when he says, “That was part of the point of the tomatoes. I was showing Lateesha that just cause I got muscles don't mean I'm some jungle beast.”

Curtis’s main reason for planting tomatoes is to impress a girl and to show her that he has changed.  Curtis is another example of how the community garden affects the characters in the novel.

Curtis plants tomatoes in the garden in an effort to impress and win back his ex-girlfriend, Lateesha. He explains that when he was younger and going out with Lateesha, he was into bodybuilding. This attracted other girls, and he says he cheated on Lateesha on more than one occasion. When she found out, she broke off their relationship.

A few years down the line, he has realized his mistake and is now looking to win her back. Lateesha's brother tells him that Lateesha is still single and looking for a husband, but when Curtis tries to talk to her, she turns her back on him.

He knows that she loves tomatoes—she used to make sandwiches with just one big slice of tomato in between the bread—and that her dream is to move to the country where she can grow her own food. So he decides to start growing his own tomatoes.

The garden is right in front of her apartment, and so he is sure that at some point she will see him tending to his patch.