Upside-down tomatoes a curiosity

By Steven Olson
North Forty News

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In container gardening, the newest technique is growing tomatoes upside-down.

It's not exactly a new technique--the idea has been advertised for the last five years or so in gardening catalogs and supply magazines, but now the ads have infiltrated television.

"We've been getting a lot of calls about it," said Kathy Reed at Fort Collins Nursery, "but we don't have it and I don't know who's really done it here."

She's not alone. The technique is unfamiliar even among gardeners. Upside-down tomatoes are grown in a container that can be a hanging basket or a plastic pot with a hole cut into the bottom, or in some cases a garbage bag.

Master Gardener Darlene Banderet said the technique spread westward from the East. The basic method of making such a container follows:

• Take a plastic pot and drill a 2-inch hole in the bottom.
• Line the bottom of the pot with a piece of landscaping fabric; cut an 'x' in the fabric where it overlaps the hole.
• Push the root ball of a tomato plant through the hole and the 'x.'
• Fill the pot with soil and then hang it up with a good sturdy chain onto something that will take more weight than a hanging pot.

One can find some gardeners' experiences and instructions for making such a planter online by searching the words "upside-down tomatoes."

Information remains sketchy, however. Extension horticultural agent for Larimer County, Alison Stoven, said there is no research on it. "I looked everywhere, and there is nothing I can find," she said.

Colorado State University Extension has nothing in its big collection of fact sheets.

"There's a reason for experimenting with it right there," Stoven said. "My dad got an upside-down tomato planter, and he has some regular tomatoes, too. It'll be interesting to see how it works."

In a survey of local greenhouses, only Gulley's Greenhouse in Fort Collins carried the equipment.

"I've never grown one myself, but we have the stuff you need to grow one," said Staaysha Olson-Larsen in the annuals department at Gulley's.

The market for upside-down tomatoes is twofold. One is the market for gardeners who want large tomato plants but who don't have a lot of space.

Olson-Larsen said one benefit of the technique is that once the container and plant are assembled, a gardener doesn't have to stake or cage the plant and doesn't have to store the stakes or cages in the off season.

Stoven had the same idea. Since the pot constricts the roots, indeterminate tomatoes, which tend to vine everywhere and have to be tied to stakes in leafy towers at least 5 feet high, don't grow as long. One can grow indeterminate tomatoes upside down in a smaller space.

The other market is experienced gardeners growing plants upside down as a curiosity. When the process was described to Jim Roberts, owner of the Plantorium in LaPorte, he saw the curious gardener as the only market and instead focused on the economics.

"Your patio pot is about 5 to 10 inches [in diameter] and your hanging basket is 12 inches," he said. "You'd be better off with a patio pot. You'd use less soil. You know who this would be good for? The guy grilling on his patio for some of his friends. The guy points to one and says, 'Hey, look at my tomatoes, they grow upside down.'"

Local gardeners and nursery workers generally concurred: It is oddly appealing. Stoven thought it would be a good way to illustrate to children that plants don't have to grow right side up. If the container were transparent, they could even see how the roots grow.

"You know," said Banderet, "this is for the guy who has a patio home and sits on his patio and waters his lawn with a hose. Now he can do the same with his tomatoes."