Growing Tomatoes Upside Down??

Tomatoes are one of my favourite fruits – I love cooking with them, and I love some varieties in my salads. But growing them upside down? Come on you have to be joking…what could I possibly gain by this? Well doing a quick search around the net their seems to be a considerable amount of interest in this method of growing tomatoes. A lot of the content is from internet marketeers (the content is often poor and repeated). However, their are also a lot of quite informative web pages on this subject, not to mention the thriving industry in “hanging planters”, “the upside down tomato garden”, “topsy turvy bags”…etc etc.

So what’s it all about? Well, the people making the planters, tomato gardens etc will tell you in their marketing blurb that your tomato crop will flourish in these contraptions because of the advantages that not being grown on the ground gives ie. lack of soil-born pests, greater air circulation, and better use of floor space. Well there is perhaps a good argument for saving floorspace. I know that I sometimes feel a bit resentful that my tomato grow-bags take up room on my patio at all. This seems a potential solution.

What about the crops themselves however? Plants are not meant to be grown inverted – indeed, I have read on quite a few message boards and blogs in this community that some people have plants that grow awkwardly since they try and bend around to counteract the affect of gravity. Also, a tomato plant’s drinking roots are its deepest roots  - but no so when the plant is inverted – hence why it seems so many people complain that they have trouble with drying out. One good tip I did read for the latter is to mix a lot of vermiculite, or other water absorbing/holding, material in with your potting compost, especially at the top of the planter or ‘garden’ (top of the container when its inverted). This means that when you water your planter from above, a lot of the water won’t soak quickly downwards and out of the bottom of the planter because the vermiculite will ‘hold’ onto it (depending on how much you mix in of course). Therefore, some moisture will be kept in the vicinity of the tomato plant’s drinking roots which are meant to be deeper but are generally at the top of the container when the plant is upside down.

Im going to carry out an experiment with my neighbour who is also intrigued by this approach to growing tomatoes – we are going to try 3 different species of tomato in 3 different upside down containers – a self-made bucket type of hanging planter, a topsy turvy bag, and a tomato garden. We are going to companion plant with Pot Marigold (Calendula officinalis) in the upside down garden, which is generally helpful in repelling tomato worm, whitefly and asparagus beetle. We haven’t fully decided exactly which varieties yet but it will probably include ‘Legend’ since we have had blight problems in the past 2 seasons and this is a hardy type, Burpees Delicious cause it my favourite and maybe Italian Gold. I will report back our finding sin this article after the season.

source articles – http://www.practicalhomeandgarden.com:

- Growing Upside Down Tomatoes
- Excellant article about the ups and downs of growing tomatoes