I know most of you are familiar with the fad of topsy turvy tomatoes. The bags they made for the purpose just didn’t appeal to us that much for using over & over, so we decided to make our own.

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We loved them so much, we re-use them every year. They last much better for multiple uses than the bag style you can get at the store, like these  Upside down Tomato Planter (2 pack). The kind you can buy work fine, we just preferred choosing our colors, shapes and sizes and something that would last more than a season or two. We did try the popular kind, and they worked well, so if you want to take the lazy way out 😉 , order a set!

The best plant we have found to grow in these planters is cherry tomatoes.

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They do amazing grown this way, and hanging from our porch nearly to the ground and covered with sweet edible jewels. We much prefer this, since it looks nice and takes up no space we need, instead of taking of bakoodles of space in our fairly small garden plot! We tried regular tomatoes and various peppers, but they seem to do better when grown more conventionally than in the topsy turvy method.
We used some nice, but inexpensive, plastic pots. My husband drilled a small hole in each side and ran a wire through it to the length we wanted our pots to hang at. He then drilled a much larger hole in the bottom of the bottom for our tomato plant to come out of. We lined the bottom with coconut liner, and cut an x in the bottom if needed.

Situate your young plant carefully through the hole out the bottom, angling it slightly in the direction of where the sun will come from most while it is hanging. Fill around and above it with potting soil. Hang your plant and water thoroughly.

If you have a porch like we used to have, I love using this type of Hanging Plant Hook. If you want to put it in the yard, use something like this Standing Pole Plant Hook.
Once the plant starts flowering, I always go over the plant and pinch of the little “sucker stems” growing at the root of the main stems and add some crushed egg shells and a bit of plant food of some sort, like manure tea. This gives them an extra boost of nutrients at a crucial time.

If you notice the marigolds in the picture with my young tomato plants, that is not just for prettiness.

It’s tried and true companion planting. Many pests who like to chow down on tomatoes are repelled by marigolds, so they make a great garden partnership. My mom was planting marigolds and tomatoes together when I was little, and we’ve always had less pest than many who don’t plant that way.
Has anyone else grown plants topsy turvy style? What kind? How did it work out for you? If you haven’t tried it, are you planning to now? 🙂

Interested in food preservation? Read about my post about freezing peppers.