Tuesday, January 12, 2016

Product Experiment - Upside-down Planters - The Results are In!

By completely accident we became the owners of two separate upside-down planters.
I have always been intrigued by these contraptions.

We never had one during our apartment days.
But I always kinda wanted one secretly.
(not so secret now though)

By the spring, this year, we had two of them.
Along with our gigantic garden and auxiliary garden beds,
it seemed like we really didn't need them!

However, I thought it would be worth a try this year.
And to show you all the results!

Bonus!


We chose two different varieties of cherry tomato plant.
One was a sweet million...the other was labelled tri colour.
(we never did find out what tri colour meant....
they looked exactly like a sun gold to me)
We had them both on our deck railing.
Both were south facing with loads of sunlight.
One did far better than the other.


The tri colour started going to flower almost instantly!


The sweet million died shortly after its first water.
(Luckily we had a bunch of sweet million volunteers in the garden,
so we didn't do without red cherry tomatoes at all!)

I have to say...I was completely unimpressed by these things!
Sure, if you live in an apartment, they kinda make sense.
If I were an apartment dweller...I would just go with planters and elevate them
using milk crates or whatever.
That brings the planter up to a height were the whole plant gets enough sunlight.
(those barricades are tall in apartments!)
I would also recommend rotating the plants so that the entire plant gets light...
instead of just one side.
Its important to note that if you use planters...
make them big but not so big you can't rotate them.
(or put them on something with wheels or casters)

We usually resort to planters for cherry tomato plants because when we plant them
in the ground...they truly go insane.
They branch out and lay down all over whatever had the nerve to be planted next to it.

RESULTS:

Don't bother!
Use a container that allows the plant to grow as nature intended.
If you are only looking for a few handfuls of cherry tomatoes...
than maybe this is the solution for you.
Me?  I love cherry tomatoes.
A few handfuls wouldn't do me (let alone the rest of the family)
any good.
The whole season reaped a sad return for my efforts.



Anyone else had a turn with these contraptions?
I'd love to here your feedback.
Sound off below!




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