How to Grow Inverted Tomatoes

Making your own inverted-style tomato planters is easier and cheaper than one might think. All you need to make these 'Topsy-Turvy' style planters is an old plastic bucket (from 2 to 5 gallons), some potting soil, a small tomato plant, some large screw-hooks, and someplace strong enough to hang them from.

These items can easily and cheaply be obtained from any hardware store, but the most surprising thing about this project is that the buckets themselves can usually be obtained for free. Many painters and construction contractors throw away countless 5-gallon buckets, plus supermarkets and bakeries will probably let you have them for free if you just ask. Also, the Home Depot will give you their trademark 5-gallon plastic buckets for free whenever you buy items from them for a home improvement project (like, say, potting soil or fertilizer).

The first thing you need to do is find someplace strong enough to hang the planter from. A good, strong, wooden beam supporting the porch is a great spot, just so long as you select a site where the tomato plant can get full sun. Additionally, you could construct a homemade stand for them, just make sure that the bucket hangs freely with the bottom at least four feet from the ground.

If using a wooden beam or tree branch, make sure to screw the hooks deeply into the wood, but be careful not to strip the hole out, or the planter will collapse from the weight. Another good suggestion is old clothesline support poles (especially the "T"-shaped kind), so no hook would be required, and you could simply slip the bail of the bucket over the protruding rod (or even the stub of a strong branch).

Next, invert the bucket (as shown in Figure 1), and cut a hole no larger than an inch in diameter (the small, raised ring is useful as a guide). First, drill a starter hole about 3/8 of an inch or larger, then use a keyhole saw or a very sharp knife with a stout blade to cut it out to size (a sabre-saw or jigsaw may also be used for this, but always remember to drill a pilot hole first). The hole doesn't have to be perfect or even pretty, just as long as the stem of the plant can grow unimpeded.

Now you must carefully place the seedling through the hole in the bottom of the bucket, being extremely careful not to damage the tender young branches while doing this. A neat trick I use is to put a small plastic sandwich baggie over the seedling, carefully bunching the branches together after the bag is in place, and secure it with some scotch tape. Now the baby plant can be inserted through the hole in a snap!

After the plant is safely through the hole, hang the bucket up and carefully remove the plastic bag and center the seedling carefully in the hole. Next step is to carefully add your potting soil to the bucket, filling a 2-gallon container about 2 inches from the top, and a 5-gallon container about halfway up.

Finally, add fertilizer and water to your tomato planter, but don't over-water, as the roots will get the water faster than they would if they were planted downwards, as normal planting would dictate.

Why plant upside-down? Well, there are several benefits to inverting tomato plants, the first being that squirrels and other garden pests have a more difficult time getting to the blossoms, and therefore cannot eat them before they mature into usable fruit. Additionally, it is much easier to control weeds in these containers as well (and you can even cover the dirt with the original bucket lids, but it's not absolutely vital to the plant's performance).

Perhaps the nicest advantage to this topsy-turvy style planting is that your tomato vines do not have to be tied and staked, as the branches will hang down quite naturally. Also, gravity helps bring nutrients to the leaves and fruit faster, making for more and bigger tomatoes, which is what every Levittown farmer is after, right?

If you follow these simple steps, you, too, can grow inverted tomatoes without shelling out big money for a commercially-available outfit, and you get even more satisfaction knowing you made these yourself (and the extra cash in your pocket doesn't hurt, either!)