which varieties work best for upside-down tomatoes?

I hate to disappoint you, but I really don't have an answer.

The Handyman and I were discussing the possibilities after we noticed a very sad roma hanging from the upside-down bucket on the right.

He's got a few crispy edges and doesn't seem to want to make that full turn towards the sun.  

The other two sweet 100's look great, so if the roma doesn't perk up soon, he may be transferred to the raised bed space (and replaced by my favorite, gardener's delight!)

The first year of upside-down tomatoes, the handyman did a brandywine, a juliet, and a forgotten-variety of cherry.  The brandywine did okay, but it had a pretty average yield with quite a bit of weight-strain on the plant.  The others were superb.

 Last years patio princesses and gardener's delight and tumbling toms were all quite successful, even if the patio's didn't ripen very quickly in our cool summer.

No matter what works best, my favorite's still the gardener's delight (have I already mentioned that?).  We went to Moeller's Nursery down in Corvallis - they'd advertised in Craigslist that they have twenty-something tomato varieties, all for $1.25 a piece.  They definitely didn't disappoint.  

They didn't have gardener's delight, but they said the cherry red's were identical (I hope they're right!)  I also got some sunsugar and sweet millions to try... In the meantime, I'll poke around the old interweb to see if I can find a more definitive answer to the question!

(P.S. Moellers had bell peppers and hot peppers for a buck each.  And holy moly, it was petunia heaven - even Burpee doesn't have that many varieties for sale! It was great!)

why hang tomatoes upside down from buckets?

Well, since you asked...

There are several reasons.

For starters, there are no weeds.    

At this point in the sales pitch from the Handyman, I was sold.  No weeds sounds fantastic, doesn't it? 

The downside to that is that you're going to have to hang your buckets somewhere, and somewhere needs to be sturdy enough to hold a bucket of dirt, water, and some big, juicy, tomatoes.  Somewhere will need some extra work to make sure that your tomatoes don't rip a a tiny corner off of your house or tip a post over onto your prized roses. 

So you won't be spending time weeding or mulching, but you're going to have to get out some tools to secure those suckers.

How big a bucket should you use? We use 3 gallon buckets. An autopsy of last years buckets (same size) revealed that the roots barely take up a quarter of the space. I have no idea if you'd be better off going bigger or smaller, but we're digging the size we use.

This year there are TWO plants in each bucket.  The Handyman has all patio princesses, and I've got four princesses, two gardeners delight, a tumbling tom, and a yellow pear. 

 

To be honest, the jury's still out on the princesses.  Those gals aren't the leggy beauties that the others have become.  Their fruit is still mostly green, and the Handyman thinks that maybe they're not for such a northern latitude. (The princess is in the above picture on the right.)

  

Their fruit, though, is much bigger than we expected.  So while there are many more cherries on the others, these princesses are putting out plump, bigger-than-golf-ball-sized tomatoes. 

We'll need 'em big because we've got 36 health kick hybrids in the community garden plots that are struggling to turn red, too, and my little heart is set on some sauce.

Okay, but I digress.  We're talking benefits of hanging your tomatoes.  How about I just list them?

1) No weeds

2) Harvest at chest height; no bending over

3) Increased air flow

4) Fewer critters to climb up and snack on your beauties

5) Makes more space in your garden for other things, especially in raised beds.

The best reason I can give for hanging your tomatoes (or any other vegetable) is that it's fun.  It's gardening up in the air where you usually don't garden.  Hanging veggie buckets make people do a double-take when they stroll by your yard in the evening, expecting to see petunias or osteospermum or lobelia trailing down from up high.

Sorry, but this is where the photo shoot ended. I started eating, and before I knew it, all the red ones were in my belly.  Upside-down or right-side up, they do all taste the same!

Though much of the information in this post has been mentioned in the earlier ones, there are other posts on upside down tomatoes - with different pictures.  There's even a step-by-step of one way to put your buckets together.  Just click the button on the right, and you'll get a list of 'em!  If you've got something hanging in your garden, do comment so everyone can go see your pictures!

last of the upside down tomatoes and a creepy sweet pea

You would think these buckets grew dollar bills since I post about them so much, but I promise, until there's fruit, I'm not blogging about them anymore... after I show you these pictures.




The Handyman is taking off supports now that the concrete has set. (and in case you're curious, those are cucumbers in the pot between the tomatos posts. I've never grown cucumbers before, but I'm hoping I can train them up the posts.)

Next, here are some potted flowers... It's not anything special, but I wanted to prove that there were some weird shadows when I was taking pictures.




I promise I did not add shadows in photoshop. Nor did I paste in that little spider lurking on the wall...



It's a mixture of Eckford sweet peas and senator sweet peas. Hopefully there will be some better pictures when the sweet peas start climbing and blooimg - more sun, less creepy.

upside down tomato hooks and emma-roo

When I went to take this picture, the handyman exclaimed, "Don't take a picture yet. They're not even plumbed!" While I have the good sense to know "plumbed" has nothing to do with running water in this case, I decided plumbed or not, I was taking the picture.




Emma-roo has never been a nickname for Emma. She's been Emma-bean, Emma-lou, Emma-honey, Emma-remma - the list goes on a long ways but has never covered Emma-roo. And, I gotta tell ya, it probably won't. I was flipping through some pictures, and I found this action shot. (If I call it an "action shot" can I be excused for it's terrible focus?)

When she gets really wound up, Emma races around with her haunches low; it has something to do both with the running and the fact that the big white dog will randomly dart in and pick up one of her back legs in his mouth. He doesn't bite. Sometimes he shakes a little like a shark with a snack, but he doesn't bite down hard. She's not wild about it though. Anyway, when I first saw this picture, little black kangaroo, or Emma-roo, came to mind.

making upside-down tomato buckets

So, to get started, you need your buckets, your tomato plants, some dirt, some osmocote (or if you'd prefer no fertilizer, that works, too), some wire mesh screen, and some landscaping cloth. Scissors and wire cutters also required.

First, you cut the wire cloth in a circle that is smaller than the bottom of your bucket. Next, you cut two holes in the middle that have paths from the edge of the circle so you can eventually slide the tomato plant in.

Then, make sure your wire mesh fits in the bottom of your bucket/container.

Cut the landscaping cloth into circles that are the same size (almost is good enough) as your wire mesh.

Match the holes in the wire mesh with holes in the cloth. Cut different paths from the edge to provide extra structure to hold the dirt up.

Trim leaves from base of tomato plant and put the wire mesh and the landscaping cloth on/around the plants. (You'll want the mesh to be on top, but it doesn't matter too much which goes on first - whatever works for you.)

Place the tomato plant inside the bucket. I've read that you should plant tomatoes deeper in the dirt so that the stem will put down more roots. Our have always been fine, but I thought I'd pass that idea on.





Turn upside-down. When you take the plastic containers off the plants, you can scootch them closer together. You want to make sure that the stems are in the middle of your mesh holes so they won't get cut or run out of room to grow.

Place osmocote or other fertilizer into bucket of dirt before hanging.

Place buckets in shade so that leaves don't burn while they're turning in their new direction. Last year we had a few leaves that burned (turned yellow) because it was a little too much sun too fast. In a few days the plants will be growing away from the ground.

Mulch the top of the buckets. And move into sun when the leaves have all turned.

So, counting cutting the holes in the buckets, it took about a half day's worth of time to finish the project. And I must admit, I'm not sure everything we did was necessary, but we like the way it looks. There are lots of sites you can find with Google that have other ways to do this - though I think the buckets look better than the bags (and the buckets last year after year!)

tomato buckets and power tools

Remember the handyman's upside-down tomato plants?

Well, it just so happens that I get my own this year. I'll have two simple posts with hooks on either side for four buckets. There's a new plan for the holes in the buckets - we decided to make them larger to allow for sticking in larger starts or fitting a couple of patio princesses in there. I suppose we could have started the tomatoes in the buckets, but using power tools was much more fun...

We should give those of you who know me a moment to laugh here.... AND have another.... Done? Okay.

For the rest of you, I'll catch you up. My history with power tools has not been uneventful. As a little girl, I had visited my father where he worked in the hospital and saw a man sitting on a gurney with one hand holding another hand that was missing some fingers. How many? I don't know - I just saw the end of an arm wrapped in bloody gauze. My dad leaned over and whispered in my ear, "That's what happens when you stop being afraid of power tools. He almost cut his hand off with a chainsaw."

Ah, it's so easy to scare small children. My dad was the champion. It's easy to confuse them, too. Are chainsaws power tools?

With that fear firmly planted in mind, yesterday the handyman handed me the drill and said, "Drill some holes, woman!" (Okay, he probably left out the "woman" part.) I managed the holes fine, but had to have some coaching on using the electric saw to cut out the rest of the opening. I will say that despite my whining and complaining, the handyman made me do them by myself, so I'm giving myself credit here. I did them. By myself.... Even though there's no picture to prove it.

Cutting his small holes into larger ones.


I like that you can't tell in the picture that my holes are misshapen. Throughout school, my art teachers all said a lack of symmetry was interesting. I plan on having the most interesting tomatoes. Ever.
In the picture above I'm hammering the sharp edge of the hole so that the plants, and my fingers, don't get cut at any point during the transfer or eventual upside-down swinging in the wind. It also creates a little bit of a lip so that a small amount of moisture is retained.

You also might be interested to know that I'm wearing three fleeces and can't feel my bum. Smart, huh?

Because it took a month of Sundays to cut and hammer my holes, the handyman helped me get the labels off with a heating gun.

Since his were old and the opportunity for peeling had long since passed, he decided it was a good enough reason to get out a blow torch. I really really wanted to use it, but the handyman scoffed at the idea of me burning his labels. (If you can't tell, I think it would have been much better to stick the torch in my eager paw than give me an electric saw... but who am I to question his judgement?)

Well, Dad would be proud. The fear's still there, but there was no blood, no lost fingers, no corneal abrasions. And, I think the final products turned out just fine.

Upside-down tomato plants

Last summer, my boyfriend read about, and decided to try, upside-down tomato plants in his backyard.  Even though it seemed to make sense - less bugs to climb up the main stem, more air circulation around the leaves, easy to water, your garden isn't taken over w/tomatoes - we were a bit skeptical.  Turns out, all the hype is true... upside-down tomato plants ARE pretty awesome.

Here is an article with step-by-step instructions on making your own upside-down planters.  I think we'll adjust these so that there is a little more depth at the top of the bucket (when hanging upside down).  Erik secured a wooden board with holes drilled through it to almost the very top.  Water would run in and get soaked up by the dirt, but it will be nice to have a little more space this year to let the water pool then slowly drain. Last year, I had to circle through frequently to make sure they had enough water.