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Gary350
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What's your experience with upside down tomato plants?

A friend bought an upside down hanging tomato plant. The plant keeps trying to grow up.

It is a problem to water. His wife has to stand on a small ladder to put water in the basket.

It was making several tomatoes but after it got heavy the whole plant fell out of the hanging basket.

TCHarris32
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My mom has grown a topsy turvy tomato plant for the last 5 or 6 years. The first year, she put 2 plants in there. That was a HUGE mistake. They grew like mad for a while then as soon as they started making fruit, they choked each other out and flat out quit growing. We pulled one plant and the other made a few tomatoes yet but not up to the potential.

The last 5 years or so we have just put the one plant in there. We went with normal tomatoes the second and third years and it did quite well but there were several broken branches. We never dropped a plant out of there but the broken branches were discouraging. The last several years we switched to a kind of cherry tomatoes and once they start producing its on like donkey kong. They don't stop coming until there is snow on the ground pretty much. It gets to the point that we can pick several tomatoes just about every night for a salad if we want.

I highly recommend the topsy turvy for tomato plants. You just have to keep an eye on it and water it as needed. Also, follow the instructions on how to put the plant in and I'm sure you won't have problems with them falling out.

TCHarris32
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And it is natural for the plant to try and grow up. It's moving towards the light. Once it gets a little mass it will calm down a little.

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Gary350
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TCHarris32 wrote:And it is natural for the plant to try and grow up. It's moving towards the light. Once it gets a little mass it will calm down a little.
I wonder if you could put a mirrow under the hanging plant and it would grow towards the light of the mirror.

TCHarris32
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I really wouldn't worry about it. When it's still quite small it tries to grow up but when it starts gettin bigger the branches will hang lower.

barnhardt9999
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Your probably a little far south for upside down tomatoes. My exerience is its way too much trouble to keep the soil cool and you will need to water every day if you have good drainage or risk the roots rotting in warm marshy soil if you don't have good drainage. In ground plants give much more fruit with much less work. Generally, unless you live where it rarely gets above 85, I would say upside down is a last resort if there's no way to get it in ground.

MissHailey
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I was wondering the same thing, my upside down tomato plant will NOT grow!

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rainbowgardener
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Here's one of the threads we have had on the topsy-turvy tomato planters:

https://www.helpfulgardener.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33025

It is 11 people saying it didn't work for them and one person saying they had success with it.

If you type topsy-turvy tomatoes or upside down tomatoes into the Search the Forum keyword box you will find more written here about them.

Most of the comments about them have been negative: It's a very small amount of soil. We generally recommend growing one tomato plant in a container no smaller than 5 gallons, preferably larger, but it would be way too heavy to hang that much soil. The soil is directly exposed to full sun, instead of being protected. Water tends to run out the bottom of it on to the plant, keeping it muddy.

If you try it, it is strongly recommended you only grow cherry tomatoes or dwarf varieties in it.



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