Mark Donofrio believes the best tasting tomato is homegrown, freshly picked, and still warm from the sun.
“I think it’s the best fruit in the world,” he said.
Gardening has been in his blood since he was 4 years old. Mother Nature always amazed him, and now he’s made a career as a farmer, operating on The Starter Farm’s 5 acres in Santa Ynez.
Grow your own
Experience Tomatomania on April 11 and 12 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at The Bakery Farmstand in Los Olivos, located at Santa Barbara and Olivet avenues. For more information, visit tomatomania.com. Catch up with Mark Donofrio at thestarterfarm.com or on Instagram @thestarterfarm.
Today he’s best known as a flower grower, but Donofrio once worked for Tomatomania, a traveling seedling sale that’s been popping up throughout California and other select states for more than two decades. The event continues to expand, and this year’s local festival on April 11 and 12 will look a little different than years past.
For one, it outgrew its previous Santa Ynez location, so this year it’ll set up at The Bakery Farmstand in Los Olivos. Donofrio, who helps organize the Central Coast pop-ups, is introducing new flowers (including edible ones) and tomato seedlings for people to buy. Restaurants in town plan to create cocktail and food specials that fit with the theme.
“There’s a sense of excitement that I kind of really like about it,” Donofrio said. “It’s a really fun event.”
Pepper plants will also be for sale, ranging from sweet specimens to spicy chocolate habaneros. For a colorful pop, Donofrio’s starter flower packs will be available to beautify visitors’ yards and gardens.
To complement the sale, the farmer will also lead three classes that weekend. He’ll share expertise in the basics of starting a garden, how to fix mistakes, and how to plant specialty flowers, the main attractions at The Starter Farm.
‘I think it’s the best fruit in the world.’
—Mark Donofrio, Tomatomania organizer
Perhaps the true lure of Tomatomania is that shoppers can find tomato varieties that nurseries don’t typically carry. Global inventories feel endless because people are constantly breeding new varieties, but not all of them will grow well in Central Coast weather. Donofrio selects seedlings for the sale that will do well in the local climate. This year, festivalgoers will see more than 70 kinds of tomatoes. At other Tomatomanias there can be hundreds, he said.
Attendees can expect seedlings that’ll grow into multicolored yellow, green, orange, and red fruits of all sizes. The plants will be in 4-inch pots, ready to be transferred to a garden bed or into the ground.
Each seedling has helpful information on its label: days until maturity, hybrid or heirloom, appearance, and how long the plant will produce fruit, information that helps shoppers choose the best plants for their environment.
Tomatomania’s 2026 tomato of the year is Sart Roloise, a Belgian heirloom with yellow coloring and a tropical sweetness.
“It’s gorgeous,” Donofrio said. “It’s fruity but also has a nice balance of meatiness to it as well. And it’s hands down, in the past two years, the No. 1 tomato that people have loved in a taste test.”
And as an established name in the Central Coast agricultural industry, he’d know. Donofrio worked for Tomatomania for five years as the director of operations and education but branched out on his own path in 2009. The New Jersey native moved to California as an actor, working in the entertainment industry and later owning a restaurant with a friend in LA.
That was when he discovered a nearby community garden in the same neighborhood as his restaurant. Donofrio said growing produce there saved his life.
“We were growing vegetables, and I was bringing them in for the restaurant, which was kind of neat,” Donofrio said.
A couple of years later he bought his own plot in Santa Ynez, The Starter Farm, where he grows tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, herbs, and leafy greens. Donofrio realized that his flowers were selling quicker than his tomatoes, so he pivoted to being predominantly a cut flower farm.
The combination works because he’s a “big permaculture guy,” planting flowers alongside produce for a more sustainable farm.
“The flowers are great because they attract all the beneficial insects that eat the bad insects on your vegetables,” Donofrio explained. “I try to encourage people to always intermix.”
Santa Barbara County is a great market for cut flowers. He supplies certain supermarkets, florists, wedding designers, and other event coordinators.
“I like the fact that something that I grow is there at people’s happiest times, like their weddings and anniversaries,” he said. “But it’s also there to celebrate people’s lives at funerals.”
Flowers from The Starter Farm are freshly picked, and every stem is usable, the farmer said. They’ll last longer than if people bought from the “big guys” like the international cultivators that supply grocery chains.
Plus, Donofrio’s flowers are simply different.
“We try to grow flowers that the larger growers in the world are not doing. We may grow lisianthus, but we grow a brown color lisianthus,” he said. “I’m constantly on the internet at nighttime looking for, like, new varieties of marigolds.”
He found a grower in Washington who breeds marigolds, and that’s opened a whole new world for The Starter Farm this year. Donofrio is also bound to get new ideas from a trip to the Netherlands, where he’ll have the opportunity to see experimental flowers in greenhouses.
Fun and games aside, farming is a year-round job. As much as he loves Mother Nature, the grower said she’s kicking his butt this year. Heavy rains brought in a fungus, which is hard to kill using the organic methods he prides himself on.
But, if there’s one thing Donofrio loves, it’s digging in the dirt. He said he’ll be growing plants on The Starter Farm until he can no longer pick up a shovel.
Reach Staff Writer Madison White at mwhite@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in April 2 – April 9, 2026.