Some Lessons About Upside Down Hanging Tomatoes
Well I started this little adventure a little while ago now and I have a few lessons to share even before the first tomato has been born.
- Upside down tomatoes are cool looking, but really not practical. We’re talking close to a cubic foot of dirt for 1 plant.
- Earthworms apparently die in warm soil. Ok, in hot soil. Ugh.
- Because the soil packs so easily hanging upside down, you need to consider something like extra vermiculite to keep it loose. (even if you’re using a garden soil with vermiculite or perlite in it.)
- If you’re not using a commercial setup and make a homemade upside down tomato like I did, you REALLY need to consider one of those peat moss spongy thingys. The reason is that it will fit around the plant and then squeeze into the neck of the water bottle you are using. If you don’t use something like this, the dirt will fall away and you will have exposed roots in the neck of the water bottle after about a week. Trust me. It’s a bugger to get the dirt BACK into the neck and keep the plant where you want it.
- However, if you skip the above step and find the dirt has fallen away from the neck of the water bottle and you can’t get any back into it. What you do is get a rubber mallet - not a regular hammer - and bonk the bottle to vibrate the dirt back into the neck. Make sure to hold on to the plant or you’ll vibrate it right out of the bottle!
Now, you may be wondering to yourself - “Why can’t I use a regular hammer?” Well, because I did and it didn’t work. Seriously, because a regular hammer doesn’t cover enough mass on the water bottle, so enough vibration isn’t created to jostle the dirt. The rubber mallet has a much larger face and because it just bounces off the bottle, it creates a nice vibration. You can actually feel the bottle vibrate when you whack it.
Just make sure you hang on to your plant. I mean it when I say it will jiggle it’s way out! Trust me, I don’t tell you this stuff because I read it somewhere. There’s a reason the dog stands in the door and calls me an idiot while I stand there in my jammies and say, “Oh Crap.”
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