Sunday, May 25, 2008

Tomato Tree Day 1

This will be a short post designed to introduce a gardening experiment I'll be trying this summer.

There are two things you need to know about Crabby. First, I love fresh tomatoes. Second, I'm a sucker for all those late night infomercials with products designed to improve my life beyond any reasonable expectation. Normally I ignore them, but occasionally, whether due to exhaustion or over consumption of wine, I end up trying one of these "god-sends".

A couple of weeks ago, I bought the Topsy Turvy Tomato Planter (with stand). This is an invention wherein the tomatoes are suspended in the air and thus grow downward. Now there are all sorts of alleged benefits to this approach, but I was primarily attracted to the space saving nature of the product as well as the promise of higher yields per square foot.

It has been a truly glorious spring weekend here in Michigan. Probably the first and last before the summer's humid onslaught. It was a perfect weekend to plant the garden, and the Topsy Turvy. So here are some photos. I'll post updates as the summer progresses. I planted 6 plants in this contraption
(with the expectation that 2 or 3 won't survive), and only 1 "conventionally", so if thing doesn't work... Well, no guts, no glory.

With some luck we're only a couple of months from one of life's great taste treats, Bacon, Lettuce and Tomato Sandwiches with fresh tomatoes.


3 comments:

Maggie said...

Oooooooo! I can't wait to see how well it works.

I've had the worst luck with tomatoes in the last few years. Years ago I had the cheapest, thinnest, crappiest, surely from K-mart plastic pots that were left by a previous owner of the house I was living in at the time. The tomato plants were always in need of water but produced prolifically and tasted wonderful. Then I moved and bought some relatively expensive water resevoir pots and have had crappy harvests and lack luster flavored tomatoes ever since. I could use some infomerical ones. What kinds of tomatoes did you plant in them?

www.crabbycook.com said...

Hi Maggie,

It does seem that good drainage is a big factor. This year I've planted 2 heirloom types ( 2 Brandywine and 2 Mt. Spring, both bought at the local farmers market) as well as 2 old reliables, (1 Beefmaster and 1 Better Boy).

We'll see how it works out.

JillyB said...

I love fresh tomatoes too and am looking forward to seeing how your upside down planter fares.