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 ?

thanks
Ed

"Ed" wrote:

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 ?

thanks
Ed

My interpretation is that the plants are put into hanging pots and as
they get larger, they drape over the edge and grow down.
--
Susan N.

"Moral indignation is in most cases two percent moral, 48 percent indignation, and 50 percent envy."
Vittorio De Sica, Italian movie director (1901-1974)

Ed wrote:
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 ?

thanks
Ed

I don't know. I posted what I thought that it was and asked for info in
the original thread. Maybe someone will answer there.

--
Steve

From my understanding, you cut a small hole in the bottom of your planter
with the plant snuggly planted "upside down" ...


"Ed" wrote in message
oups.com...
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 ?

thanks
Ed

In article .com,
"Ed" wrote:

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 ?

thanks
Ed

The newspaper here did a series on this last summer. As I recall they
used the big 5 gallon plastic buckets like paint comes in. They drilled
a big hole in the bottom of the bucket. Covered it with landscape
fabric. Filled the bucket with potting soil. Hammered the lid on.
Turned the bucket upside down, cut an "X" in the fabric and planted the
tomato seedling. After the plant had grown to a particular size the
bucket was turned over to hang by the handle and the lid was removed for
ease of watering.

The method has been around for quite a while. I should think you could
find more detailed directions on the web if you wanted them.

marcella

Marcella, that is the way, that I have been told it was done. I guess it is
the lazy way to plant a small bunch of Tomatoes, without having to stake
them. I was wondering if any one had success with this way.
Mikael


"Marcella Peek" wrote in message
...
In article .com,

The newspaper here did a series on this last summer. As I recall they
used the big 5 gallon plastic buckets like paint comes in. They drilled
a big hole in the bottom of the bucket. Covered it with landscape
fabric. Filled the bucket with potting soil. Hammered the lid on.
Turned the bucket upside down, cut an "X" in the fabric and planted the
tomato seedling. After the plant had grown to a particular size the
bucket was turned over to hang by the handle and the lid was removed for
ease of watering.

The method has been around for quite a while. I should think you could
find more detailed directions on the web if you wanted them.

marcella

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 [ Brevity is the soul of wit. W.Shakespeare ]

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...

There is no need to change the world. All we have to do is toilet train the world and we'll never have to change it again. -- Swami Beyondanada

,,Cat's Haven Hobby Farm,,Katraatcenturyteldotnet,,

http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl...user id=katra

Ed wrote:

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 ?

thanks
Ed


Ed,

It works. I bought an upside-down planter from an online gardern site
and got over 2 dozen tomatoes in 8 weeks. There's a foam insert in the
bottom that keeps the dirt from coming out. It's a bit of a pain to set
it up (it's heavy once loaded with wet soil). But once it's hung, it's
easy to maintain. Once the plant is established, you have to water it
every day.

Overall, it's a good technique for those without good soil or a tiny
backyard.

As for your area, there are many varieties that do well in the northern
climes. I suggest a google search on cool climate tomatoes. Also, I'm
sure your local nurseries know what works in your area.

Chris

The recent thread in rec.gardens.edible about growing tomatoes upside
down gave me reason to pause and think. In the mid 1960s, there was
an article in Scientific American magazine about growing plants in a
simulated zero-gravity environment doing nothing more than rotating
the plant around three axes, rotating its position or orientation
automatically with motors that were kept running on a 24 hour basis.
I've long since lost or misplaced that copy of the magazine, but bagging
a plant's root system, directing the growth of the stem, and allowing
for constant reorientation of the plant as expected, ought to provide
a means of growing the stem of the corn plant into all kinds of fanciful
shapes like curlicues, pretzels, knots, and bows.

So, has anybody done this with corn yet? Does anybody have some
pictures of corn growing upside down? Can corn be made to grow upside
down, maybe by positioning a fluorescent light underneath it?

"Ed" wrote in message
oups.com...
Also living in Washington state, would
this be a good climate to grow them like this ?

Since tomato blight is a common problem in our state, one of the advantages
of growing them upside down is that they may be easier to keep ventilated
and from moisture staying on them, encouraging these problems.

What is the best
tomatoes for this area ?

For growing upside down, or for simply growing?

Right side up, any of the early fruiting types (Willamette Spring, Early
Girl, etc.) are recommended. Otherwise, you may not get red ones until
September.


--
Warm Regards,

Claire Petersky
Home of the meditative cyclist:
http://home.earthlink.net/~cpetersky/Welcome.htm
Personal page: http://www.geocities.com/cpetersky/
See the books I've set free at:
http://bookcrossing.com/referral/Cpetersky

You probably would not be able to grow corn upside down because
gravitropism would cause the stem to bend back upward. Gravitropism is
usually stronger than phototropism. If you had a mutant plant that did
not respond to gravity, then you could do it. There are mutant pea
plants (ageotropum) whose roots do not respond to gravity but its
shoots do respond to gravity in the light.

There are many weeping plant cultivars (e.g. Sargent's weeping hemlock,
weeping cherry, weeping willows, weeping beech, weeping mulberry,
weeping crabapple, Cedrus atlantica 'Glauca Pendula', etc.) with branch
tips that normally grow toward the force of gravity. Rooting cuttings
from weeping branches might be an easy way of growing upside down
plants.

A clinostat is a device that slowly rotates a plant, about 1 revolution
per minute, and can prevent phototropism and gravitropism. The motion
would be like sitting a potted plant on a record turntable and spinning
it at a slower speed. If the potted plant is firmly attached to the
clinostat and then the whole apparatus is placed so the potted plant is
horizontal, then the plant should continue to grow straight. Both
gravitropism and phototropism would be negated because the plant has no
time to orient itself because it is constantly changing position
relative to gravity and any directional light source.

Reference

Jaffe, M.J., Takahashi, H. and Biro, R.L. 1985. A pea mutant for the
study of hydrotropism in roots. Science 230: 445-447.


David R. Hershey

wrote in message
oups.com...
You probably would not be able to grow corn upside down because
gravitropism would cause the stem to bend back upward. Gravitropism is
usually stronger than phototropism. If you had a mutant plant that did
not respond to gravity, then you could do it. There are mutant pea
plants (ageotropum) whose roots do not respond to gravity but its
shoots do respond to gravity in the light.

There are many weeping plant cultivars (e.g. Sargent's weeping hemlock,
weeping cherry, weeping willows, weeping beech, weeping mulberry,
weeping crabapple, Cedrus atlantica 'Glauca Pendula', etc.) with branch
tips that normally grow toward the force of gravity. Rooting cuttings
from weeping branches might be an easy way of growing upside down
plants.

A clinostat is a device that slowly rotates a plant, about 1 revolution
per minute, and can prevent phototropism and gravitropism. The motion
would be like sitting a potted plant on a record turntable and spinning
it at a slower speed. If the potted plant is firmly attached to the
clinostat and then the whole apparatus is placed so the potted plant is
horizontal, then the plant should continue to grow straight. Both
gravitropism and phototropism would be negated because the plant has no
time to orient itself because it is constantly changing position
relative to gravity and any directional light source.

Reference

Jaffe, M.J., Takahashi, H. and Biro, R.L. 1985. A pea mutant for the
study of hydrotropism in roots. Science 230: 445-447.


David R. Hershey


My father had a small elm-like tree once, the top part of which had been
grafted upside down. He didn't believe this of course but the brances were
definately pointed downwards and there was a grafting scar at the join.
Instead of the umbrella shape he was hoping for he got a weird mutant!

I tried the upside down tomato in a 5-gallon bucket last summer after
seeing an article in Organic Gardening. Everytime I'd water, the water
would drip down onto the stem and leaves and the result was instant
disease. Did I just set it up wrong?

"Claire Petersky" wrote:
Since tomato blight is a common problem in our state, one of the
advantages of growing them upside down is that they may be easier
to keep ventilated and from moisture staying on them, encouraging
these problems.

Anyone else find that tomatoes love to be bottom fed? I mean sitting
a clay pot in a bowl and filling the bowl with water during the morning.

I've got four plants in a little 1qt clay pot that are doing just wonderful
underneath a tree (they don't seem to like the Florida heat). I don't
think the water is evaporating during the day too much, and the water
is always gone by the start of evening. Could be squirrels coming by
for a drink I imagine, though. I've got a few other tomato plants
growing in the ground but they just don't seem to be growing like the
ones in the clay pot. Maybe I'm only imagining it and have to give
them another month ?

--
Jim Carlock
Post replies to newsgroup.