Growing tomatoes can be hit and miss – I should know I’v been doing it for over 10 years.  Why is this then? Well the humble tomato is quite a complex fruit. It is comprised of roughly 400 acids, sugars and other elements, many of which are quite volatile and change considerably depending on the variety and the stage of the growing/ripening process. Growing your own tomatoes is sometimes fraught with frustration – as the flavours inside the fruit develop it becomes softer and more easily damaged. Judging the correct time to pick the fruit can take some careful judgement as well, supermarkets tend to take a cautious approach and focus on getting the fruit to the shelves intact, therefore picking them early when firm. The problem with this approach that the fruit hasn’t ripened on the vine and the results are often a bland flavour. This is the main reason why growing tomatoes at home can produce a tastier crop.

In the last couple of years there has been some radical developments in the area of tomato cultivation – I’m talking about the idea of growing them upside down.  If you grow tomatoes yourself you may already have seen some ads for upside down tomato planters. They come in a variety of names such as – ‘topsy turvy planter’, ‘the upside down tomato garden‘, ‘upside down planter’, some of these, like the ‘topsy turvy’ is a particular brand but they all generally amount to the same thing – some sort of container for growing your tomato plants inverted.

Now there are a few supposed advantages to suspending your tomato plants in an upside-down container, namely:

• They tend to involve less work than a vegetable patch since there is no digging , tilling and weeding  involved
• Since they are not in contact with the ground they generally suffer less from soil borne diseases, damaging insects and fungal growth, and garden visitors who may like to eat tomatoes too will have more of a problme getting at them
• You don’t need to worry about keeping the plant upright
• They are space-saving ie. you don’t need a garden or even a patio or balcony area to  use them, you can even hang them indoors

Disadvantages of Growing Tomatoes Upside Down

• Tomato plants do need a certain amount of sun exposure to grow and ripen the fruit and having the planter above the plant will obviously make it more difficult to get sun and light. To try and negate this problem you can ensure that your planter, or garden, is well placed, in an open area that receives a good amount of sunlight
• Some gardeners seem to frown on the idea of growing anything upside down, arguing that any plant naturally dislikes growing upside down and therefore you must be putting it at a disadvantage. There seems to be some debate over this, but it seems that alot of people have had good results with inverted growing methods
• While some argue that an upside down planter is less work in terms of preparing a vegetable patch or grow-bag, there is surely some work involved in preparing the planter, especially if you do not have any existing fixture on which its convenient to hang a planter
• Upside down tomato gardens tend to be easier in this repect than a planter such as the topsy turvy, since they are generally supplied with a hanging frame, but of course the trade-off is that they are more expensive.

Making Your Own Tomato Planter

If you don’t want to spend money buying a tomato garden or a ready made planter such as the Topsy-turvey bags then here is a way to make your own.

You will need:

• a bucket that has a strong handle and close-fitting lid

• some material such as a piece of gardening cloth or hemp

• potting compost and vermiculite

• something to hang the planter from

To Make it:

1. cut a hole in the centre of both the bucket’s lid and the bottom about 2 inches wide
2. with the bucket upright take off the lid and place a of the fabric over the hole (to keep the soil in place). Now fill the bucket with a mixture potting compost and vermiculite – making the concentration of vermiculite greater towards the top of the bucket. The reason for this is that a tomato plants drinking roots are its deepest, or its shallowest when the bucket is inverted. So when the plant is upside down the vermiculite, which absorbs water will help keep the moisture at the top of the bucket where the drinking roots will be. Place another piece of fabric over the top of the compost. Make sure the bucket is full to the top so that there will be no movement when you fitted the lid in place.
3. Fasten the lid on the bucket securely and turn it over so that it is standing on its lid. Cut a slit in the filter or fabric that should be showing across the hole you cut earlier.
4. Now plant your tomato seedling in the compost making sure it is firmly rooted (you may want to remove the lower leaves from the stem).
5. Firstly, stand the bucket in a warm sunny area for the first few weeks until the seedling is about 1 foot tall, watering regularly and then hang the planter upside down somewhere convenient by its handle.
6. You can water the plant via the hole in the lid of the bucket which should now be on the top.

See a comparison between the results of using a homemade planter and a topsy-turvy bag: