Growing Vegetables Upside Down

IF pests and blight are wrecking your plants, it might be time to turn your garden on its head. Growing crops that dangle upside down from homemade or commercially available planters is growing more popular, and its adherents swear they’ll never come back down to earth.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/20/garden/20tomato.html?src=me&ref=general

Might be worth a try, although I am doing weel with the raised bed method.

(I would have to spend a fortune building hanging supports for the containers) and the general ugliness of upside down planters (the "topsy-turvy" commercial planters are hideous and the ones made with various buckets aren't much better.)

Plus, it can get pretty windy in my part of the world, and I'm afraid it would be hard to secure a heavy, fruit-laden tomato plant. I have a hard enough time wiring my hanging petunias to their shepards hooks.

I can see why this is a good solution for some and if I ever go back to apartment living, i would give this a try (after coming up with some kind of anti-ugliness solution for the buckets), but for now I'll remain on terra firma.

For a way to overcome the ugliness factor, too. I do have one spot that's between some hedges and a pool fence and if I could erect two posts and put a bar from one post to the other, it would be perfect.

Ratz, and I just returned my $50/day rental of a two-man auger.


Cher

no holes needed. Drop a solid pole/rod across the tops and instant hanging garden.

we have 6 tripods and 7 10ft poles on top of em. That equals a lot of garden without tilling/weeding.

Just fold them up at the end of the season

So far it is doing quite well. Loaded with tomatoes. Need to watch the watering and fertilizing
a bit more than with "in the ground" plants, though. Will let you know the taste of the tomatoes when they ripen. Am going to get a couple more containers and try some other veggies. Appreciate any ideas from those of you in the know about what might do well. Good luck, wildeyed...z

hangers for tomatoes, found at http://www.cheapvegetablegardener.com/2009/04/make-your-own-upside-down-tomato.html

My wife bought the "topsy turvy" thing a year ago but it is apparently not resistant to ultra violet, so this year when we started to fill it the plastic sides tore open.

So out came the 7-up bottles and we followed the plan above. 3 or 4 years ago I bought some 2" pvc which has legs that go up about 6 feet, with a couple of tees, to hang some signs on either side. The signs are long gone, but this big standing rectangle works really well for this little project.

You may want to get some perlite and peat moss to help the mix hold water better and get rid of some of the weight.

I used 2 parts potting soil, 2-3 parts perlite, 1 part peat moss, and a handful of an organic fertilizer.

The raised beds are cool too. I had some plywood around, so I just created some rectangles about 10" deep, 10 feet long, 32" wide.

Layered about 1/2" of wet newspaper on the bottom, then a bale of peat moss, then dried leaves, some manure, then peat moss, mulch,peat moss. About 10" thick or so.

Onions are doing great, so are strawberries, radish, a few other things. We had tomatoes in the ground, but there was a one night freeze about the last week of May, killed off most of 5 or 6 of them, so had to replant. Threw the remains in a salvage bed, and some are starting to regrow.

Watering all this, plus the stuff up front, was going to take forever, so I installed a cheapo watering system. I used 3/4" pvc to go up and down all the rows, put 3/4 x 1/2" threaded adaptors on top of some tees, little watering nozzles that use some 1/4" tubing with drippers on the end for all the tomatoe and pepper plants, long drip tubing for the 2 rows of corn, some extra lengths for the hanging stuff and the salvage bed.

Now we turn on one valve and it waters the 3 raised beds, the 5 rows, and the hanging vegatables.

I recently found a pump that I can drop into my rain barrels that will pump the water into a hose or drip line, so I could use your system and still stick with my recycled water.

But it's pretty easy. A washing machine hose (female on both ends) will screw onto a 3/4" pvc adapter and the other end screws onto a faucet. So you get a pvc adapter that is 3/4" male pipe thread one one side, and a slip (glue fitting) on the other, glue that to a piece of pvc that extends to whatever you want to water.

Most of those submersible pumps have a rubber hose that the water comes out of. Lowes sells hose repair parts, you might be able to find a 5/8 male hose end that would just fit inside the hose from your pump. Or cut the end off a garden hose and use a hose repair kit, (or a couple of hose clamps and a piece of copper pipe), and attach that to the cut-off male end of a garden hose.

You will need little watering (distribution) heads. (Lowes and Home Depot both carry them but they had a more expensive and complicated set than I wanted, Walmart had the best ones, (I try to avoid Walmart for food and a few other things, but they are one of the few places that has a good selection of these in smaller towns, few places even carry them).

Each of them has 4 or 8 little outlets on the top, and a 1/2" threaded hole on the bottom. Where you want to put one you just glue a T (if you are going to continue the run) or a 90 degree L (if you are stopping at that point) and put a 4-5" piece of 3/4 PVC sticking up. On the end that is sticking up you glue a 3/4" slip X 1/2" male pipe thread adapter. You should wrap the thread ends that are sticking up with some teflon tape, also available at Homer, 2-3 turns clockwise around it, to help prevent leaks. Then screw the distribution head on, just hand tight to avoid cracking.

They also sell 1/4" tubing, one kind has little holes about every 6", another has multiple smaller "weep" holes throughout the length, and a third kind is "distribution tubing" with no holes. On th eend of the distribution tubing they sell various "drippers", one of which is a flag type that I adjust to its lowest setting.

They do sell a 1/2" inch tubing, but it's cheaper to use PVC and fittings. If you buy it at Home Depot, and you don't have a pickup or a long vehicle, take your hacksaw or buy one there (inexpensive is fine if you don't want it for anything else) because the joints of PVC are 10 feet long and you can cut them in half. Buy a few 3/4" X 3/4" slip adapters if you need to glue this pipe back together - those are pretty handy sometimes.

For the raised beds I use one of the other types of tubing. You just slip one end of the tubing over the small nozzle and run it where you need it. I run it through the bed and then back to one of the other nozzle outlets, or sometime plug them at the end. (They sell caps, but I find that cheap golf tees work just as well).

If you have glued pvc before just ignore this part. If you need for your hands to stay clean wear gloves, because you will get the primer and glue on your hands, and it will take a few days to get off - not painful, but it does put purple blotches on your skin. Comes off pretty good with a kitchen scrubby, but it takes awhile.

To glue the fittings or pipe together you need a can of "purple primer" and a can of cement. Oateys is a popular brand, but there are others. Using a hacksaw cut the pipe where you need to, clean off the little burs with a rag (if your hands are soft they can cut your skin so be careful). When you open the primer or cement there should be a little round ball of material on the end of a wire that extends into the primer or glue. Be sure and get the cans stable, because in the act of pulling the applicator in and out it is very easy to knock them over - or maybe I'm just clumsy. Just swab the end of the pipe, then the inside of the fitting with the primer, put that applicator back. Then swab the pipe with the cement and then the inside of the fitting, put the applicator back, and stick the pipe into the adapter with a little bit of a turn to make sure the cement is spread evenly.

Be sure the T or 90 degree L is pointed the way you want it when you are finished because it sets up in seconds.

You could probably use 1/2" for all this, but I had 3/4" laying around, and not all the adapters were available in 1/2", so I went with what was cheap and easy.

So you need
hacksaw
teflon tape
washing machine hose
3/4" pvc pipe
3/4" male pipe thread X 3/4" slip adapter
3/4" slip X 1/2" male pipe thread adapter
3/4" 90 degree "L" adpater
3/4" T adapter
3/4" slip X slip adapter
purple primer and cement.
distribution head
1/4 tubing and drippers, or 1/4 tubing with holes.
Scissors to cut tubing

It's a lot easier to do than explain, but if you make a mistake you just cut it out and glue in another piece. I think there are a couple things I may change, (some things need a little less water than they are getting) but this is my first attempt so that is to be expected.

They also sell small valves that are PVC, which you can glue in-line so you could shut off parts of the system, but I want to see how it progresses through the summer b4 I put those in, save a few bucks if I don't need them.

And I will try to get some pictures up.

We are re-doing our deck in the fall. I want to add extensive planters with an auto watering system.

http://picasaweb.google.com/114673155623969679263/Garden62010#

And let me know if you can't see them...

Last weekend I went to 4 yard sales. Three of then had these topsy-turvy planters for sale. One sale had 4 of them. I guess a lot of people prefer good old terra firma.