In article ,
"Loki" wrote:

il 23 Feb 2005 05:21:26 -0800, "Ed" ha scritto:

Im fairly new to gardening, and this may be a stupid question, but how
do you grow tomatoe plants upside down ? how does the plant and dirt
stay in hanging upside down ? Also living in Washington state, would
this be a good climate to grow them like this ? What is the best
tomatoes for this area ?

It all seems a bit strange to me. All plants react to factors on
Earth. One is light/dark and another is gravity. The roots grow down
- away from light and reacting to gravity, water etc. Tomatoes will
grow towards light and if not staked, the gravity (their weight) will
pull them down while they struggle upwards vainly. The disadvantage
on flat ground is that the slugs love the tomatoes at ground level.
So staking helps keep 'em off the soil and towards light. (Next year
I'll stake mine) If one lets them trail down below pot level I
imagine what you'd need to do is support the trusses, otherwise the
weight of the plant growth will cause the stem to break or pull the
plant out of the soil (which doesn't have to be upside down! - we are
not in space) You could probably even espalier the tomato plant.

Notwithstanding all that. I once planted an apple seed and wondered
why it looked so strange growing - I pulled it out - It was totally
upside down, with it's leaves opening under the soil. So much for
those lectures I'd been attending about plant cell growth!


--
Cheers,
Loki

lol That reminds me of when I was a student aid for my Botany
professor many many years ago... I was in charge of taking care of the
greenhouse for the botany class and keeping up with a planting schedule,
as well as weeding and keeping the greenhouse clean and organized.
I got paid $3.00 per hour for doing it. (I was 17 so that was 25 years
ago!)

Anyway, I had to plant a bunch of peanuts in a low, flat planter. After
a few days, they looked really odd! Dr. Newkirk came by and I asked him
about it, and he immediately noted that I'd planted them upside down. We
then "dissected" a peanut so he could show me the seed anatomy. G

He had me turn them all right side up and gently rinse the baby leaves
off, then talk to the plants, apologize and re-assure them that
everything was going to be ok now.... and he was quite serious about it.
;-)

Gods I learned SO much from that teacher and that job!!!

Hmmmmmm... speaking of greenhouses, the sun just came out. I need to get
my butt out to Greenhouse #2 and get those baby rainbow chards into the
outside planter before they die in those little 1" starter pots.......

--
K.

Sprout the Mung Bean to reply...

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