This is the second year that my husband and I have had a little vegetable garden in the back yard, and tomatoes are one of our favorite things to grow.  One problem is that the plants get very large and need to be staked or put in the support cages to keep them upright, so every time we saw the “Topsy Turvy” commercial on TV we thought it sounded like a great idea!

This year, we decided to give growing tomatoes upside down a try.  But instead of ordering a plastic green bag to plant our tomato plant in, we decided to build our own.

(You’ll notice the more traditional tomato cage around another tomato plant in the background… we were hedging our bets in case the upside down tomato growing didn’t work.)

What makes a “topsy turvy” is a planter with a hole in the bottom, large enough for the plant to fit through, and a hole or opening on top for water.  You then hang it up either with a hook onto a patio or a shepherd’s hook in the garden (as you see above).  Tomatoes are very resiliant and hardy plants, and will start to grow back upwards towards the sun which doesn’t affect them at all.  All you need to do is make sure they have enough water!

We took a wire hanging planter with coco mat lining and cut a hole in the bottom of the coco matting.

We gently fed the green part of the plant through the hole from the inside of the planter, leaving the roots inside, and filled with potting soil.  We then covered it with a little mulch to help retain moisture, and, voila!  Our own topsy turvy planter!  And I might add, I think it looks nicer than the original.

Ours:

Theirs:

So far, so good with our little experiment!  In fact, my husband swears that this tomato plant is doing better than the others – it even has its first blooms!

The cost of this will depend on where you buy your supplies.  We bought our planter and shephard’s hook at Big Lots, and probably spent about $10 to $15 for both, which is not a huge savings over the original Topsy Turvy, but we both think it looks nicer in our garden, and if we don’t re-use the planter for tomatoes next year, we can use it like a regular hanging planter again.