Growing Upside-Down Tomatoes

Mid-Spring 2009; South King County --

Grumpy grew up on a farm in Western South Dakota; he remembers the large garden his Mother raised each year. Later in the middle of the Great Depression, when we moved to the nearest town (Dupree), Grumpy helped raise an even larger garden (including flowers!) that his Dad had laid out as terraces (to preserve the precious water that would otherwise have run off when the snow melted in the Spring). One of Grumpy's jobs was plowing the garden each Spring, using a team of horses borrowed from a neighbor. This sure beat the previous method where Grumpy used a spade to turn over every square inch of the garden area!

Grumpy's endeavors to raise much of a garden, after he moved with his little family to Seattle, have mostly been dismal failures. Two items have been spectacularly memorable successes, however: three "rescued" Zucchini plants, all of which grew lustily and produced an abundance of Zucchini (try giving away excess Zucchini and you soon lose contact with your neighbors!); the other also belonged to the squash family -- Acorn Squash. Grumpy remembers mowing around the squash vine as it extended itself out over the front lawn. By late Summer or early Fall, when Grumpy was rewarded with a dozen or so beautiful Acorn Squashes, the grass had grown so tall that Grumpy had to dig down into the growth to extract the squash. But it was worth it!

Last year, Grumpy tried growing a tomato plant using the technique of hanging the plant upside down. However, the planter box in which he planted the tomato was a home-made device that didn't have adequate soil and a means to provide consistent moisture. Although last year's attempt produced some fruit on the vine, none of it grew very large and none of it ripened by the time there was danger of frost and Grumpy had to bring it inside.

For Christmas the Grand Mother presented Grumpy with two fine planters for growing upside-down tomatoes. These planters look like the "cat's meow"; they are much deeper than Grumpy's home-made device and have a partial cover over the top to minimize the loss of moisture by evaporation. When filled with fertile soil and properly moistened with water, they are also very heavy!!

This Spring, Grumpy received four tomato plants from Heidi, his favorite Swede; they were: Early Girl, Pineapple, Sun Gold and Yellow Pear. The instructions encouraged the planting of two tomatoes in each planter. Unfortunately, Grumpy temporarily hung the Early Girl/Pineapple pair in a place where they got bumped and broken off within a few days of being hung upside down. Grumpy replaced these with what he hopes is an Early Girl and a new tomato called "Glacier" (see photo on right). We'll see what develops.

The effect of gravity on the growth of tomatoes is interesting. This first photo on the left shows the initial orientation of the original Early Girl and Pineapple a day or so after they had been transplanted from their starter pots into the upside-down planter. They are not wilted but have just not yet realized that they are now upside-down!

The second photo shows the other tomato plants (Sun Gold and Yellow Pear) beginning to curl upward and outward. They are "looking for" the sun!

The third photo further demonstrates that, as these plants grow more, they "crawl along" the bottom side of the planter, obviously "looking for" the sun and apparently still trying to "grow up". In a couple of weeks, the vines will become too large and heavy for their stems to support this sideways growth and they will begin to sag downward and continue growing as they hang below the container with their roots.

More photos will follow as the days go by, including some when the first tomato that "sets on"!