Project Started Saturday May 28, 2005
Updated April 27, 2008
After reading a webpage about growing tomatos "upside down", I decided to try it myself. In all my years, I had never heard of such a thing until two weeks ago. And on the Saturday May 28, 2005 when I went to Walmart and bought a couple of tomato plants and potting soil, that was when my first experience started.
While standing in line to check out, I saw a couple of people I knew and starting telling them I was taking the tomato plants home to plant upside down. Everyone starting listening and looking and wondering, I even think the cashier was about ready to call for those guys in the white suits to come take me away. But I do think I had a couple of people believing me, and that I was not crazy. This one man I didn't even know, told me he didn't have internet access, but his wife did, and he was going to check out my 'upside down tomato webpage'. He told me he was going to call me too, just to find out more and check on the progress of my tomato endeavor. lol
On the first day I took an old 5 gallon paint bucket with the snap-on lid and turned it upside down and using a utility knife, cut about a 3 inch hole in the bottom of the bucket. Next I took the lid and cut a 3 inch hole in the center of the lid too.
Next I took some newspaper, placed in the bottom of the bucket so as to cover the hole, and then filled the bucket using a 40 lb bag of potting soil. A 40 lb bag of potting soil will completely fill a five gallon bucket with none left over.
Next I snapped the lid on the bucket, then turned it upside down. Then cutting a couple of slits in the newspaper, and using my fingers to reach inside the 3 inch hole, I fashioned out a small cavity so the entire tomato plant, roots and all, would fit inside. Now you're ready to hang the tomato plant upside down!
So, what's so great about growing tomatos upside down? Well, I've been reading on the Net and find several. First, they dont have near the problem with disease as tomatos growing on the ground. Also being hung off the ground tends to make it a lot more difficult for animals and bugs to get to the plants. Not to mention they dont need tilling or weeding! You can read more about growing upside down tomatos at the following websites:
MiniFarmHomestead.com
MountVernonNews.com
OldFashionLiving.com
Here is the first pictures I took of my tomato project showing the bucket upside down, filled with potting soil, and tomato plant inserted into hole.
Click Here...... View Number 1Click Here...... View Number 2
This is a view of the bucket hanging upside down and the tomato plant underneath pointing down toward the ground.
Click Here...... View Number 3On a regular basis I will be showing the progress of the project below:
14 days after setting the plant in a bucket upside down, the plant is just starting to show blooms. The plant looks very healthy. There is no sign of any leaf disease. There is no sign of bugs eating on the plant.
Click Here...... View Number 4***UPDATE*** On Friday morning around 1:30am June 17, 2005 a terrible storm came through Ardmore and blew away the above tomato plant. (I was without electricity for 29 hrs.) Thankfully I had planted 2, so the picture below is the one that survived that morning. In this pic 22 days has past since I first planted it. It does have some blooms on it!
Click Here...... View Number 5On Sunday June 19th I planted a new Roma tomato plant to replace the one that blew away. Here is a pic of it right after planting and hanging upside down.
Click Here...... View Number 6Friday July 15th: My one storm surviving Early Girl tomato plant is doing pretty good after 45 days. It is showing some signs of bugs eating on one half of it. And it has plenty of blooms, just no tomatoes yet. An "expert" tomato plant grower in Shawnee told me it needs hot days and cool nights. So I moved it way back near the fence, and hung it from a clothes line pole. This "expert" told me it needs to get cooler in the evenings, and if it doesn't, the blooms will not make tomatoes. So, the experiment of the upside down tomato plant goes on!
Click Here...... View Number 7September 5th, 2005 Well, I have given up on growing tomatos upside down. They never turned out one tomatoe, even though there were plenty of blossoms in the beginning. Ardmoreite Doug Morris planted both kinds, one in a bucket upside down, and one in the ground. The one in the ground did do better than the upside down plant. But his upside down plant did put out some nice tomatos. You can read and Doug's tomato plants below.
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April 27, 2008 Jill has planted about 6 tomato plants this year, but not upside down. So we will see how these plants turnout. I was told this week that if you place a nail in the ground right along side the tomato plant stem, this will keep the cut worms from eating them. Jill has put the nails in place, so we will see how this experiment goes too. Below are a couple of pics I took this past week of the tomato plants, and another picture of a plant with nail.
Over view of plants Close up of a plant
Close up of nail experiment
What others are saying......
08/02/05 "Butch- I promised a later-in-the-season update, so here it is. As you can see from the photos, my upside-down plant is a raging success. It is touching the ground now so in the future I'll need to hang the planters higher & perhaps prune the top...or bottom, however you look at it! The plants hanging upright have also done very well, but the weight of the tomatoes on the Big Beef plant broke several branches. The branches didn't die but they have become diseased, none of which is apparent on the upside-down plant. It's branches twist down without breaking (see photo), with the increasing weight of the (large) fruit. Watering is the most difficult part of any hanging garden but next year I'll have a drip system & timer set up to take care of that chore. You'll notice that I've already built next year's hanging system onto my old clothesline pole, with 5 hangers on each side. I'll use the other pole to hang 2-3 more. I recently bought 10 more Topsy Turvey planters on eBay at an off-season bargain price. The benefits of upside-down gardening are huge: no weeding, no staking, no pruning & no recurring disease (biggest benefit IMHO). Most tomato plants develop (airborne) fungal disease as the season progresses but seldom in time to ruin the yield, unless the diseases have carried over in the soil from past seasons (see my in-ground plant photo). In such cases, the plant has little chance of surviving let alone producing any fruit. With hanging plants, you just trash all the planting medium in the fall, clean the planters & start fresh the next spring. I will probably use a moisture-control type soilless potting mix next season instead of plain sphagnum moss. More expense but probably well worth it. It may be a little work initially preparing for this type of growing system but I believe that it is the wave of the future for home gardeners with limited growing space, limited sunny area, or diseased/worn out soil. Wherever you can sink a couple of posts can be your garden. If you are diligent in keeping your plants watered, I guarantee that this system will succeed. Let gravity work for you instead of against you next year!" -Steve in Central Indiana
Click Here Photo 1 - Click Here Photo 2 - Click Here Photo 3 - Click Here Photo 4
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07/16/05 "After having read about growing "upside down" tomatoes on your "This & That", I helped my wife, Clariece, established one in our back yard. She planted her own seed she had saved. It is an "Improved Porter" variety. Her plant as of today is three feet "upside down tall" and has eighteen green tomatoes from ready to ripen down to the smallest one that can be seen along with numerous blossoms. We plan to give some to you, Butch, once they begin to ripen. We have raised only Porter tomatoes since in the late 1950's. The Porter was developed by a person at a Stephenville, TX nursery; just when, we don't know. It pollinates in the hottest weather conditions that Oklahoma & Texas can produce. Its fruit has a small oblong shape, quite meaty, and low in acid. It is NOT a Cherry Tomato. In more recent years there has been developed an "Improved Porter" which bears a larger fruit than the original strain. When we had a garden, we gave volunteer seedlings to numerous neighbors and friends. We enjoyed repeat "customers" for years! A next door neighbor, Dettie Burns, kept telling us that she loved tomatoes, but couldn't eat them because they were too acid. After finally getting her to try the Porter, she helped us gather ours for the rest of her life!" -Doug Morris, Ardmore, OK Click Here Photo 1 and Click Here Photo 2
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07/16/05 "Butch, Tomatoes love nitrogen. Tomatoes that do not get plenty of air flow have to be shook. This helps them to pollinate." -Jo
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07/10/05 "Butch, These are tomatoes out of our garden --- just old fashioned planted in the ground. The big ones are Celebrity and Merced and the small ones are Fourth of July plants. We brought these in this week and there are more on the vines. We have 3 Celebrity, 1 Merced and 1 Fourth of July plants. I have canned four pints so far and I am going to can tomorrow. Okra is also doing great and oriental eggplant is doing good also. Wish we had room for cantaloupe but they require vine space and we don't have a large enough garden." -Ann Randolph Click Here
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06/20/05 "This is my first year of trying the upside down tomatoes...... I planted two, one each in five gallon buckets. I had them hanging in one area then moved them to another area so they could get more sun, but this is what happened. I had wrapped them with black cloth, but when I moved them one of the covers fell off and I didn't replace it until almost 3 weeks later. What I did see is the one that was still covered had grown all most 10 inches longer. A friend did the same but did not cover the container as I did his is much shorter than the one the cover fell off. I used clothespins to hold the black material on. I just drape/wrap a black cloth which was one of me black tee shirts. This will hold in the heat much longer after the sun goes down. As you know they love the heat. If you plant is blooming or as soon as it puts on about 3 blooms break of one off not snip off the leaves. The plant will think it is under attack and will set up a self defense system. Exactly what that does I don't know. I learned this from an old tomato friend. He said that he has never seen a bug at all on any of his plants. Also this is for next year... Put in the bucket about half way down a whole egg they like sulfur. Plant/bury at least 30% of the stock it will make a stronger stock. If you have the area/place go to the store and buy the tall iron sheperd's hooks the double one so you can grow them in the sun. They need at least 50% sun." -Ed Tieman Click Here
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06/14/05 "Butch- I'm following your upside-down planter project with great interest & thought you may be interested in my experiment. My regular garden tomato row soil has become so plagued with disease (wilt & blight) that this is the last year for quite awhile that I'll plant there. I figured that I'd try some hanging plants to see how they'd do, my trials with pots have failed miserably. I got one Topsy Turvy planter & planted a Goliath in it May 6th & at the same time planted a Big Beef in a bag of topsoil just to see what it would do. The Big Beef grew so well, I decided to find a way to hang it where there was full sun all day. I just bought a cheap landing net, drilled a hole in the handle & hung it on a clothesline pole. This plant is now far & away my biggest, healthiest plant (in-ground or hanging). The upside-down plant is also doing well (both have 4 tomatoes on) but the stem on the bagged plant is much thicker & the plant seems much more robust. I don't know if this is due to the plant being more vigorous growing up toward the sun versus growing down (with the help of gravity!) in the Topsy Turvy but I'm leaning toward planting most of my plants that way next season. I also experimented with planting mediums - there's sphagnum moss only in the upside-down planter & a mix of moss & potting soil in the middle bag (a mature Husky Red that I just planted last weekend, it matures in 65 days so it should do well this late). There's no disease on any of them, while the in-ground plants are starting to yellow already. Didn't mean to take up your time but I thought I'd share my project results so far, I'll keep tabs on your updates. If you'd like I can send you pics later in the season when "the jury is in" on which ones do the best. Thanks for your time & good luck - we all need a bit of that growing tomatoes!" -Steve in Central Indiana
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