Your
upside down tomato planter should come with most everything you need except the soil and tomato plant. First you remove the tomato plant from the container it came in and carefully insert the root system through the hole at the bottom. Start filling with your gardening soil and about half way filled with the soil add water. Now the best thing to do is hang your planter from a sturdy pole in a sunny area of the garden before filling with the remaining soil. Once you have hung the planter completely soak the soil until the water runs out the bottom. This supplies enough water for the roots to start spreading.
When you get around to choosing the tomato seedling for your
upside down tomato garden you need to make sure the plants you pick are healthy. They should not look spindly and the stem base needs to be as wide as the stems diameter; it should be tall and wide proportionately. If you notice that the leaves are starting to curl or they are turning yellow, discard that plant for your garden and choose a healthy one, you may end up spending all your time trying to bring that plant back to health.
Fertilizing is very important for your hanging tomato. You always want your plants to look good and healthy while they are growing. Select a
fertilizer that has a low level of nitrogen if it has a high level of nitrogen you will end up with too many leaves and fewer blossoms. If your soil is sandy you need to add fertilizer more often than you do for clay soil. You will only need a couple of tablespoons of fertilizer, of low level nitrogen, mixed into the soil; if you use high level nitrogen you only want to add one tablespoon. You can fertilize your upside down garden again once the tomatoes start to appear.
Watering the tomatoes is necessary but the water seems to hold better in this type of planter even better than your conventional
garden. Tomatoes are generally 85 per cent water and they need frequent watering for survival. Some of the advantages of growing upside down tomatoes are: they are good for limited spaces; there is no staking necessary; it foils fungus and pests; there are far less weeds, if any at all. The water and nutrients go directly to where they are needed mostly due to gravity.
There are other vegetables that also work quite well in an upside down planter such as cucumbers, eggplants, beans, and peppers. Most of the vegetables that grow on vines will work well in the hanging planter as long as the crop chosen produces the smaller variety. The top section of the hanging planter can also be used to plant other vegetables such as radishes, cress, herbs, and lettuce.
Upside down tomato gardening can turn into something very exciting especially when you decide to plant other vegetables as well.
