hanging tomatoes are TOO heavy!

How about planting them in the ground like everyone else.

Make a tripod out of 8 foot long 2 x 4s and hang it from that.

If I had a good planting location I would have done so already.

That's kind of where I'm going....

I'm thinking a couple of 2 x 4 x 8' with holes drilled thru the front near the top and a piece of rigid pipe thru the holes and between the

I don't have anything constructive to offer your dilemma except, perhaps, to use a winch ("come-along") or tackle but I'm curious how you're hanging the buckets upside-down as well as how you're keeping the plants and growing medium in inverted containers. And then, there's the inevitable: "Aside from novelty, what's the point?". I mean, I grow tomatoes in containers but IME only smaller determinate varieties thrive in containers smaller than 3-4 cubic feet (30 U.S. liquid gallons = ±4 cubic feet). I'm not sure I buy into the whole inverted thing; I don't see the point and the only anecdotes I've heard/read indicate the plants try to root if hung within 5-6 feet of the Earth. It seems a gazillion years of evolution might be pretty hard to overcome ;-)....

I don't get this, why don't you just leave them in the bucket and get either a tomato cage, or a stake. Surely making a 2x4 tripod does not improve the present location?

Jeff

sometime in the recent past barbie gee posted this:

I think I see the tomatoes coming out of the bottom of the pail through a hole. Chalk this up to experience and put the buckets downside up on the ground. Just my 2 cents.

Flip it over onto some nice soft ground and grow them upright coming out of the bucket. That will work really well, but won't look as cool!

--S.

Deer and shade have driven me to planting tomatoes in pots on deck. I stake with tomato cages. Five gallon buckets are probably big enough and you could drill holes for drainage. I have a collection of these buckets left over from driveway coatings but use pots as the look better.

Your thread is interesting as I imagine most of us have figured the hanging tomatoes were a marketing gimmick.

Frank

Why do you want them to hang down? Most plants like to grow upwards, so why don't you just stick a stake in the pot and let nature do the rest.

Bigal

I laugh at the reasons the commercials give us for planting our tomatoes upside down. "The water gets to the roots!" Well yeah, it does that when they are upright too. "Gravity draws the water and nutrients to the fruit!" Umm, I don't think that's how it works. "Planting a garden is back-breaking work!" Yeah, so is trying to hang up a 70-pound bag of dirt. "Garden tomatoes can fall to the ground and spoil!" They can if they are growing upside-down too, moron. "Now you can enjoy fresh tomatoes all season long!" You can do that if you plant them in the ground too.

The main appeal of something like this is that it is novel and cool. I thought of making one with a 3-liter soda bottle for the sake of having something interesting to pique the neighbors' interest, but ended up not getting around to it. It would be especially neat to plant the tomatoes hanging from the bottom, and then use the dirt on top to grow herbs! But it's not something worth paying $20 for. If you need to grow tomatoes in commercial dirt away from weeds and pests, then just buy a $4 planter at a discount store and plant them upright.

Several of my neighbors have upside-down planters. They planted their tomatoes around the same time I planted mine in my garden. My Romas have full-sized green tomatoes now that only need to get red. My heirlooms all have small green tomatoes on them. My neighbors have NO tomatoes thus far. And one of them had a plant that grew upward until it got too heavy and broke off.

--S.

If you should to plant them up-side down, investigate the employment of pulleys.

I think the basic draw is that you do not have to continually tie up your tomatoes, thus you also do not have to risk the damage often done to the plant while tying it up.

It spins so that you do not have to walk around the plant, you can plant it next to a wall and just spin it to get to the back side.

The tomato does not lay on the ground and rot while ripening, without needing to either put on a cage or continually tie it up as it grows.

the tomatoes have been upright, coming out of the Bottom of the pails for over a week now, and have grown enough that trying to get them out of the pails and put them in the other end will be dangerous to them.

This is what I was modeling after:

I'm still at the "establishing" the tomatoes stage.

I've already decided I may lighten them by removing some soil. 4 gallons of soil is a lot! and, I'm looking at a 4 x 4 to mount them on somehow.

squirrels and other creatures cannot get to them, including slugs, bugs and things that eat tomatoes.

if I need to, I can move them around the yard to optimize sun exposure, which is partly why I'm also doing this.

They do recommend you use smaller tomato varieties, like the Patio tomatoes. I picked a cherry variety and a small other one.

One direction missing from the link you posted is to use a lightweight container potting soil (soil-less mixture). It does help cut down on the weight. I suspect you didn't do that. Is it possible to replace most of the bucketful that you have with a new, lighter weight mix?

The other direction missing is that the hook holding the container/bucket needs to support at least 50 lbs. Something to consider if you are going to try again to mount your bucket.

marcella

Since I still need to up-end them, I can probably carefully remove 2/3 of the existing soil, and replace it with half as much soilless mixture. Just waiting for it to STOP RAINING. Chicagoland is very very wet right now.

On Wed, 17 Jun 2009 22:11:24 -0600, against all advice, something compelled "Suzanne D." , to say:

Basil.