There are a number of upside-down tomato planters on the market. The principle is sound: tomatoes are vine plants and a combination of gravity and weight stops their natural inclination to grow up towards the sun. This gives you a hanging arrangement which is excellent for limited space such as balconies and lets the tomatoes get maximum sunlight.
Unfortunately, they're not cheap, but this is where our junk gardening comes into play using only a wooden hatstand scored from Freecycle and an old soda bottle.
First you need to wash that big fat 3L plastic soda bottle and get rid of all the coke ginseng and acai berry juice. Then chop off the bottom with a Stanley knife so that you're left with the screw cap end and a wide length of bottle. You'll need to make equidistant holes around the neck for hanging so...
What you then need to do is go through all of the boxes that you still haven't unpacked from November when you moved in, because you put the holepunch in one of them "for safe keeping". Along the way you'll find the spare printer cartridge, some books you forgot to return to the Women's Centre and a handful of highlighter pens.
These are all good things.
Ok: here comes the tricky part. The object of the exercise is to get happy little plantlette A (on the right) into strangely mutant and threatening-looking bottle B (on the left).
Except, it has to be upside down as well.
Ideally, you need five hands for this, but you only have two, so good luck and don't let the neighbours watch you, because you will end up on YouTube. Gently, oh so gently tease the baby tomato through the narrowest bottle neck in Christendom and try not to break any tender stems. Or leaves. Or anything, really.
Ignore Ralph next door. He'll be begging you for instructions in a month.
Finished? Good. That was the easy part. Now you have to get the earth into the bottle which you are currently balancing on your forefinger and thumb and trying not to drop. Just pack it in there so the plant is nice and snug. And remember to use really bone dry soil so that it flies into your eyes and you can't see and you drop the already traumatised tomato plant on solid concrete.
Excellent. Now you get to water it until it's soaking wet - tomatoes love water, remember? Keep it balanced on your numb fingers and use your soil-encrusted other hand to sprinkle those precious fluids. It'll get a lot heavier from this point on, but don't worry: I'm laughing along with your neighbours.
Now you need to let it drain for a bit whilst you go and find the marigolds. It's at this point that you notice the Ikea metal balcony planter that you bought back at Easter which would have come in real handy about an hour ago. You might want to use that.
Once your tomato is drained and ready to go you can plant the marigolds in the top part of the planter, which used to be the bottom but has now gone all Australian. Send Russell Crowe over to the neighbours for some tea and biscuits.
Spend the next hour prising the marigolds out of the funky tin cans you planted them in three months ago and remember to cut your finger on the razor-sharp lip that you fully intended to hammer down flat but forgot about. The cup of tea in the ER is free.
Wire up the holes that you punched so you can secure your planter to the hat hanging parts of the wooden hat stand and you're good to go. Look's good, doesn't it? And the doctors say you'll have 75% mobility in that thumb of yours in about a week, so that's a bonus.
Congratulations!
Sounds like quite an adventure! Nice that they treat you well in the ER...
No tomatoes here - the weather is too dodgy for them to grow reliably. Everything else is going crazy though!
Keep up the good work! And I hope your thumb doesn't turn green for the wrong reason...
Posted by: Anne | June 27, 2009 at 08:14 PM
Nice, but what do I do without my free kitchen tomato slicer.
Posted by: The Captain | June 27, 2009 at 08:48 PM
The hat stand might not ultimately be tall enough. I hung my tomato upside-down off our deck (2nd story) and it reached the ground. Unfortunately, it wasn't as sunny down there as I wanted it to be. But it was easy getting the tomatoes off, as long as I went down to harvest, and up to water.
Posted by: Hellbound Alleee | June 27, 2009 at 10:35 PM
Brilliant inverted companion planting action!
More please.
Posted by: Jrld | June 27, 2009 at 11:05 PM
Are the marigolds beneficial to the tomato plants, or are they used just because they are pretty?
Great post! I'll add you to my list of RSS feeds to follow.
All the best!
Sheila
Blog: All About Boats, So It Goes...
Posted by: Sheila | June 27, 2009 at 11:16 PM
Marigolds keep the roots healfy and attract polinators, which indoors means a q-tip with a human attached to it.
Posted by: Jrld | June 27, 2009 at 11:22 PM
Xcuse the disllllexico. FURTHERMORE, most tomatos I know just need a flick for pollination, *but if anyone has a list of vegies that are mutually exclusive*, by which I mean they cannot self-replicate ie get-off-on-themselves I'd like to know. I gots some Tomatillos, which are amazingly pest-repellant, but make bad gifts because they cannot self-pollinate. They need friends.
Posted by: Jrld | June 27, 2009 at 11:33 PM
I tried growing some toms in a container of that size one year; I did get fruit but the roots totally filled the container and made watering quite difficult. I suspect you could find larger bottles, on the order of 5 gallons at least. These are big plants, as Hell remarked.
Posted by: K. | June 28, 2009 at 01:52 PM
May also be used as in constructing a Gravity Bong.
Posted by: drscience | July 02, 2009 at 11:53 AM
Wouldn't you know it - the little tyke's growing upwards! LOL
He'll figure it out soon enough... onwards to the aubergines...
Posted by: GeorgyGirl | July 04, 2009 at 09:41 AM