What are Curtis' motivations?

Paul Fleischman's novel Seedfolks is 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."