(kkimpel)
A tipster sent us a link to this short advice column on gardening at PennLive.com, where the author says upside-down planters in general aren’t that great, and in dry hot summers are particularly bad for your tomatoes.
Patriot-News writer and gardener George Weigel writes:
Tomatoes do best growing in good soil in the ground, but if that’s not an option, the second best idea is growing them in pots — the bigger the better. My guess is that Topsy-Turvys will turn out to be a fad that disappears in a year or two.
Do any Consumerist readers have experience with upside-down planters? I’ve always wondered whether they provided any actual utility that made them a better investment than ordinary planters.
“No Topsy-Turvy tomatoes” [PennLive] (Thanks to Erin!)
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I’ve seen neighbors with these things, but no ripening tomatoes on them. Admittedly, it’s been an unusually cloudy summer here. I suspect the varieties sold may not be the early harvest types that do best here.
My parents tried this back in the day. The big advantage of this vs. growing the tomatoes in the ground is that the tomatoes that are starting to get ripe aren’t sitting in the dirt and rotting.
I noticed that when grown like this the tomatoes got HUGE.
My parents used pretty large pots when they did this so maybe the amount of dirt used makes a difference in how much moisture the plants are able to retain.
I tried this stupid contraption for the first time this year. I needed to keep my plants away from my dog who loves tomatoes, peppers etc. So far I have two tomatoes. One is split in half and inedible. The other is so small, and there are no leaves on the plant. Good thing this dumb thing was cheap. I might try growing weeds next year or something the birds might like to munch on, but never again for tomatoes etc. Pots it is.
I have one cherry tomato in one of these and at one time it had in excess of 40 tomatoes on it. We have been picking half a dozen tomatoes a day for 3 weeks and it is still going strong. But it must be watered heavily every day.
I used to have them and they worked okay but when the apartment complex redid my patio, they didn’t seem to get enough sun. Now I use the Earthboxes and my tomatoes are HUGE.
It’s hot where I live – the upside down planters dry up in the hot sun.