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It’s been a few weeks since I published a new post, but the plants have definitely been growing well.  As you’ll see in the first picture, the plants in the Topsy Turvy Tomato Tree have gotten kinda tall.  One of them is starting to lay over and head downwards though and I’m just waiting for the others to do the same.

Here’s the first picture of the Tomato Tree: (this was taken just a few minutes ago.  notice the tomatoes!)

Here’s a closer shot of the plants and tomatoes:

Here’s a shot of the plants in the Topsy Turvy Tomato Planter:

Here’s a shot of the Topsy Turvy Strawberry Planter.  We’ve had a few little strawberries from this and one really nice sized one.  Our youngest son (he’s 21) ate it and said it was really good and juicy.  Can’t wait for these things to really start putting out the berries.  However, I have been told that they may not do too well this first year, but should really produce next year.  Hmm… if that’s the case, I may have to order another one and plant more strawberries.  Just a thought though, dunno whether I will do that or not.

Ok, that’s it for this post.  Sorry I hadn’t posted sooner, but they hadn’t been doing much but getting taller.  It was only last week that the tomatoes began appearing and now look at them.  MMMMMM… they are going to taste really good. 

Until next time!

Well here it is almost the end of May and the plants have really been growing.  The plantings in the Topsy Turvy Tomato Tree have 17 blooms on them.  Well, they aren’t really flowering yet, but the buds are there. 

I didn’t get any pictures of the buds, but once they open up I will definitely be showing them to you then.  LOL

Here’s some pictures of the plantings.

As you can see, the plants are now well above the top of the tomato tree.  Once they start producing fruit, the plants will then start laying over and hanging down.

Here’s a picture of the regular Topsy Turvy Tomato Planter.

These plants finally have emerged from underneath the planter and should begin to really start growing faster.  At least I hope so.  There are three plants in this planter and none of them have any buds yet.  Soon though. 

And the Topsy Turvy Strawberry Planter is doing well too.  The plants are really growing and have started producing some small strawberries.  I do hope they produce larger berries than they have thus far because it will definitely take a bunch of them to make anything with.

Here’s the latest picture of the Strawberry Planter

As you can see, the strawberry plants are doing very well.  There are 17 plants in the planter, even though there are 15 holes in it.  The instructions mentioned putting 2 plants in each hole, but that was going to be quite expensive.  And really, I didn’t want to do that until I had “tested” it.  LOL

I do expect to have a bunch of fruit from all these plantings in the Topsy Turvy Planters and am really looking forward to eating them.    Frozen Strawberry Jam is my FAVORITE!!!!!  Next is blackberry jam, but those might be quite hard to grow in one of these kind of planters.  Oh I guess I could plant some blackberry bushes in the back yard, but I’m sure I would have to have a bunch of them in order to get a decent harvest.  Oh well, perhaps in the future we will do that.

Check back next week for an update and new pictures.  I’m sure the buds will have opened up by then.

Gary

Well it’s been a bit over two weeks since I planted our tomato plants in the Topsy Turvy containers and they are doing well. They do have a bit of early blight or septoria on the leaves, so it looks like I’m going to have to get some fungicide to get rid of it. If only we hadn’t had so much rain lately! LOL

Ah well, what can you do? Hopefully it won’t affect the fruit.

Here’s a picture of the Topsy Turvy Tomato Tree. Notice how much the plants have grown since being planted.

And here’s a close-up shot of the Tomato Tree bag.

And here’s a close-up of the Topsy Turvy Tomato Planter.

And if you’ve been reading the posts, you know that we have been expecting a Topsy Turvy Strawberry Planter as well. Guess what. It arrived yesterday!! WOOHOO!!! I couldn’t believe it when I opened it and took a look at it. The thing has 15 holes in it to plant strawberry plants!!! 15 HOLES!!! And they suggest putting 2 plants per hole! That’s a total of 30 plants!! YIKES!!! That can get expensive. Just to give you an example, I purchased some strawberry plants yesterday afternoon and they cost $3.86 a pot! Luckily there were a few that had more than one plant in them. But think about it, if you were to buy 30 plants at $3.86 each that would be $115.80!!!! But, then again, strawberry plants are 3 – 5 year perrenials, so over the long run it might not be too bad. For now though, we have 16 or 17 plants in the thing. Below is a picture of the Topsy Turvy Strawberry Planter.

I am looking forward to making some frozen strawberry preserves too. Yum-yum!!! Or as they used to say on the Campbell’s Soup commercials, M-Mmm Good!!!

I’ll post some more pictures next week so remember to come back. OR, click on the RSS link below and subscribe to the RSS feed from the blog so you’ll know when there’s a new post.

Hope you’re having a GREAT DAY!!!

Gary

Well last year the tomato plants ended up dying and we finally figured out what.  It was a dumb mistake on my part basically.  When I planted them last year I used topsoil for the dirt, which was completely wrong.  Never use topsoil in a container as it tends to hold the water and will end up drowning your plants.  Geez, that was stupid of me

This year though, we purchased a Topsy Turvy Tomato Tree & a Topsy Turvy Tomato Planter.  We’re also awaiting our Topsy Turvy Strawberry Planter which should arrive sometime this week.  But this time I used potting soil, which is what I should have used last year.  Don’t know what I was thinking when I used topsoil in that 5-gallon bucket.  LOL

Here’s a picture of the Topsy Turvy Tomato Tree:

And here’s a close-up of the bag:

In the instructions for planting, it mentions planting 2 plants per hole (there’s 3 planting holes in the bag), so we planted 6 plants in this bag.  We had initinally purchased a small tray of 9 tomato plants, and I probably could have planted all 9 in the Tomato Tree bag, but decided to purchase an additional Topsy Turvy Tomato Planter to plant the remaining 3 plants.  It’s hanging from the clothesline pole you see behind the Tomato Tree.

Here’s a couple of pictures of the Tomato Planter:

As I mentioned earlier, we’re still waiting for the Topsy Turvy Strawberry Planter.  I’ll have pictures of it once it arrives and we’ve planted it full of strawberry plants (I’m expecting to be able to plant 6 – 12 strawberry plants in it)

I planted these tomato plants on April 28, 2009 and I’ll be updating the progress of the plants every Saturday throughout the growing season, so come back often to see just how well the plants are doing.

Gary

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Well, it’s been 17 days since I planted the Big Boy tomato plant. That’s the one I put in a 5-gallon bucket. I am discovering that the 5-gallon bucket is the best to use for doing the upside down planting.

It appears to me that the first plant, the Better Boy tomato plant, which is planted in the hanging pot, is not doing so well. Oh it does have a few blooms on it, but overall the plant isn’t really looking that good. The only thing we can figure out is that it’s because of the smaller pot. I’m assuming that it will soon be root-bound and die.

The Big Boy Tomato plant though is doing wonderful. Below are pictures of each plant.

The Better Boy Tomato Plant

The Big Boy Tomato Plant

Both plants are blooming though, and below are a couple of pictures of the blooms.

Better Boy Blooms

Big Boy Blooms

The Big Boy’s bloom opened up yesterday and the Better Boy opened up about a week ago. I’m expecting to see some tomatoes in about 2 or 3 more weeks. I can’t wait to pick them from the vine.

Ok, I’ll post another update next week along with pictures.

Gary

I decided yesterday that I would plant another tomato plant the same way as the last one, so I went to Lowe’s and bought what I needed.

I got an empty 5-gallon plastic bucket from the Paint section and then a 2-inch hole saw, to cut a hole in the bottom of the bucket. I also purchased a “Big Boy” tomato plant and two packages of herbs, Chives and Basil.

When I got everything home, I immediately went to work. I cut the 2-inch hole in the bottom of the bucket with the hole saw, then pulled the plastic wrapper off of the tomato plant. I purchased a Bonnie’s brand plant which had a fiber pot that you plant along with the tomato plant. Supposedly it deteriorates and allows the plant to continue growing its root system throughout the pot.

After that I filled the bucket with a bag of topsoil that we had purchased at Wal-Mart. It only had one pot of dirt removed from the bag, so it was almost a full bag of topsoil. I then planted the Chives and Basil in the top of the 5-gallon bucket.

Here’s the new tomato plant:

Notice how the plant is already curled. I took this picture about 30 minutes ago. The tomato plant has been planted for about 17 hours and it’s been cloudy and raining most of the morning. But look at how the plant is already curling and reaching for the sun.

I hung the new tomato plant on the same clothesline pole as the other plant. Here they are:

I didn’t have any chain or decent rope to use to hang the bucket, so I just hung it from the handle. The plant on the right, the first tomato plant that I planted like this, is a Better Boy plant, a hybrid of the Big Boy I assume. The second plant, the one in the bucket, is a Big Boy plant.

The Better Boy plant was planted last Friday, and today is Tuesday. It has the makings of four blooms already. Here they are:

You have to look really close to see all four, but they are there.

I’ll keep you posted on how the plants are doing and I’ll also keep posting pictures so you can see their progress.

When I was at Lowe’s yesterday, the guy that showed me where the buckets were asked what I was doing, so I explained the whole thing to him. It blew him away. In the end, he was so intrigued by the method that he vowed to try it himself. Before I had left the store, he was already telling others of what I was doing. LOL They were blown away by the idea too. Everyone is when they first hear about growing tomato plants upside down. I know I was and the idea so intrigued me, that even though I’m not a huge fan of tomatoes, I had to try growing my own this way, just to see how it would turn out! LOL

Keep coming back to check the progress of my upside down garden.

Gary

Last year I saw a couple of people growing their tomatoes upside down and the idea intrigued me. We’ve never had a garden at our house, but I decided this year I was going to try growing tomatoes upside down.

What I did was to purchase a plastic hanging pot from Wal-Mart. I think it cost me a little over $3. It didn’t have a hole in the bottom so I drilled a 1-inch hole in the center of the bottom. I then removed the tomato plant from its container and knocked off all the dirt from the roots. Then, it was time to plant.

I stuck the tomato plant through the hole in the bottom of the pot and then filled the pot with dirt, spreading out the roots as I did. I then hung the pot on the clothesline pole.

Here’s a picture of how it looked after planting.

I planted this on Friday, May 9, 2008. I’ll post other pictures as the season progresses.

I had also thought of planting something in the top of the planter, but I think that will wait until next year when I will be using the recommended 5-gallon plastic buckets to do my planting.

Cya soon!!

Gary

We had a really nice Christmas this year.  Everything that everyone received was wanted and accepted with gratitude.

Pam was really surprised to find a gift certificate for a 1-hour massage session and a gift card from The Territory Ahead.   Both of those were from me.  Shane got her a Territory Ahead gift card as well so she was really excited about getting two from the same store.

Shane got me 4 Metallica CDs.  He bought them to replace the ones that him and Ian (our other son) had damaged and/or lost over the years.  I was surprised and grateful as well.

We also got a little bit of money, which is always nice.

Something that happened with me during all of this holiday celebration is that I was accepted to the International College of Metaphysical Theology.  I will be pursuing a doctorate degree.  It’s all online and self-paced, just like all the other Metaphysical schools I found out there.  Some offer lots more content, but really, why would I want to know about holistic cooking?  Dunno, maybe if I took the class I would know.

However I did not choose that school, I chose ICMT.  They came highly recommended by a person I respect, so that was one issue that helped sway me.  The other was that they had a payment plan that fits my budget. 

Also, I completed my training to become a Certified Life Coach and passed my exam!  WOOHOO!!!  On Thursday (12/27/07) I received the lessons for the Master SPIRIT Life Coach training.  There are 33 lessons in all!  From what I’ve seen thus far, it’s all metaphysical stuff, but it’s lightly metaphysical.  It doesn’t go as deep as my studies will with ICMT.  And I received my enrollment package from ICMT on Friday (12/28/07)!  Some good stuff included in there.  Two of the books for the required reading were included (yeah, books are included in the tuition price) and I have to write a 3 – 5 page paper on each one telling what I learned from them.  No SWEAT!  All of the writing that I will be required to do for this course will come easily and effortlessly to me because I will be divinely inspired.  YES!!! 

Ian starts training with Davis H. Elliot on Monday, January 7, 2008.  He’s really excited about all that.  He’s taken his written test for a CDL permit and passed easily (I knew he would).  He’s had his CDL physical and now he’s all set and ready to head to Lexington in a little over a week.  I’m excited for him.

Shane is now working at the Amazon.com fulfillment center we have in town.  He likes the work and the pay is pretty good too!  Pam is still working in the business office at Taylor Regional Hospital.  I’ll be glad when she no longer has to go to work there.

Well, that’s pretty much it.  Take care and have a Happy New Year!!

Gary