I heard about this late last summer and am going to try it this year. Upside down tomato gardening. I have a lot of trouble with raccoons getting into my tomatos. I have had them in a 4 ft by 4 ft encosure that was also 4 ft high. The buggers still got in them and ate most of the tomatos. They I read about growing them upside down. You take a 5 gal bucket, cut a 2 inch hole in the center of the bottom. Take a piece of garden weed fabric to fit the bottom of the bucket. Put a small X cut in the center of that. Put the roots and stem of the tomato through the hole and then through the X. Put your dirt or top soil in the bucket to hold the tomato in. Then you suspend the bucket. You water and fertilize from the top of the bucket. The plant will grow down at first and then bend and start growing up around the bucket. I am going to modefy this a little bit. The best place that I have that tomatoes will grow is on the south side of my garage, but the coons would still get too them. Soooooo I am going to try the buckets and suspend pullys from the eave of the garage. I will use rope and and hook the bucket to them and as they grow will raise them up out of the coons reach. As I do this, I will try to remember to check back in here and let you all know how it works!
I have seen ads for gadgets that allow you to grow upside down. What I always chuckled at was the picture showed the tomatoes growing down. No gardener took those pictures.
I have read that you can cover your soil with coffee filters if you don't want to shell out the $$ for landscaping fabric.
CK you must show us photographs of your experiment, stage by stage. I'm really interested to know if it actually works growing tomatoes upside down. If you are successful I'll give ita try it for myself and get my friend to design some special hanging baskets for me.
Eileen, there is a web site that I saw it on back in the summer. Do a search on it and you may find out more info on it. The ones they showed looked like they were hanging from a childs swing set, minus the swings!
Here is one of the web sites, but not the one I saw. http://www.minifarmhomestead.com/gardening/tomato.htm
I've heard of this too Capt, I would love to see it in action. Your experiments with it would be greatly appreciated! Do keep us updated
Thanks for the link CK. I can understand how the plants would grow UP from underneath the buckets as they will grow towards the light eventually. I think it could end up being quite a task though as you'd have to support the vines as the weight of the fruit would drag them downwards again. I really want to see piccies from you of your progress and if you could let me know just how easy (or hard) it is to grow them this way I would be very appreciative.
I have heard of this but never tried it. I just might give it a try with my jelly bean tomatoes this year.
I have the feeling the raccoons will go to the eave of the garage and drop onto you bucket and eat your tomatoes.I know they are very nosey.I have neighbors that feed from 20 to 40 raccoons daily and have took videos of them hang upside down on their cloths line to take clothes pins off.The squirrels would swing down from the eve of the house to get to the bird feeders and the raccoons will do the same.
My garage is actually a pole building with steel sideing and steel roof. There is nothing near it for them to be able to get up to the roof. So I don't have to worry about them doing that.
