How to Grow Tomatoes Upside Down
Are you ready to try your tomatoes upside down this season? We have been growing our tomatoes upside down for the last 5 years and have had great success and we are sure you will to. So join the thousands of other gardeners that have found a better way to plant upside down.
First thing we need to do is figure out what we are going to plant our tomatoes in. The last few years I have been making 5 Gal buckets bought at home depot into my upside down tomato planters. But last year and this coming year I used 4 topsy turvy planters from tv. The choice is yours as to which method you use. If your worried about looks or labor involved we recommend you buy a set of topsy turvy planters. For $20 you get 2 planters and your good to go. The DIY option requires a few new buckets, a drill, special attachments, chain, and coffee filters! You can see why the tosy turvy is the better option at this pont.
Now that we have our upside down tomato planter all ready to go we need to get planting. Get your favorite tomato seed of choice and plant it in your planter right side up. This is very important! You need to let your tomato plant grow to about a foot tall before you start to hang the plant upside down. This allows the roots to get firmly set up in their soil and will keep the plant from falling out when you hang it.
Last year we bought one of the giant tomato trees that you see on tv just for laughs and to see what would happen. It ended up growing almost 7 feet tall! Which wouldn’t be a problem if it was planted as normal but we had planted it upside down in one of our old planters. We ended up having to throw a rope over a tall tree in our back yard and running the planter to the top of the branch. It ended up working out great but if you want to try these tomato trees make sure you have enough room to keep them off the ground!
Now that we have out upside down tomato planter all set up and have a lovely tomato plant that is about a foot tall its time to hang it up. Many people we talk to have hung their planters off of old colthes line poles or other tall sturdy objects. But we have a out door wood patio that has a slatted roof that we hang ours from. It took 1 trip to the home depot to buy 4 heavy duty screw in hooks and about 5mins with the drill. But now we have hooks to hang whatever we want off of. They work great for the tomatos but when we are done with the tomatoes we can swap out for flowers and wind chimes with out a problem. If you have some sort of wood work we highly reomend this method of hanging your planters since its the most secure method.
That’s all there is to it! Just take care of your plants like you normaly would with water and fertilizer and you will be enjoying perfect tomatoes in no time. If you would like to order a topsy turvy yu can do so at their offical site http://www.hangingtomato.com or if you would like to try out the giant tomato trees you can find their site at http://www.buytomatogiant.com
