Yes, that’s right. It is June 25 and I am just now getting my fake-tomato-topsy-turvey-thing-a-ma-jig done. I would recommend you do it earlier than this.
I bought a new 5-gallon paint bucket, some potting soil, and a Mountain Pride Tomato. I don’t even know if it is determinate or indeterminate. Guess I should read the little marker.
We drilled a hole in the bottom of the bucket (about 2″). We drilled a series of holes in the lid (I will water and feed through these holes).
I removed almost all of the branches so the tomato plant could be “planted deeply” (is it still “deep” if it is upside down?). Dave held the bucket and the suspended tomato root ball while I filled in with soil and vermiculite. I sprinkled some granular fertilizer on top, which will work its’ way down through as I water.
If I’d started with a smaller plant or not worried about going “deep,” I could have used less soil. It is pretty heavy, so a strong hanger is in order.
Popped the lid on (it will even recieve rain!), and hung it about 6 1/2 feet up on the southeast corner of the house where it will get lots of hot sun. It is almost directly above the tomatillo in the straw bale. I surrounded it with some leftover bamboo shade I had hanging around for aesthetics.
I am truly afraid to face my neighbors. ;]
I would not expect to be eating fruit from this plant until mid-September at this late date. But that is OK. All the tomatoes in the straw bales are producing already and may need a break by then!
Cost: bucket, $3.50; bracket for hanging, $6.99; tomato, $3.50 (could have gotten that cheaper at a local center); 3 gallons of potting soil (practically free from a Lowe’s clearance), $1.00…so since you can buy an “authentic” topsy-turvey for about $10, no $$ savings, BUT mine will withstand micro-bursts and looks better. And that makes me happy enough.
I have determined my gardening style to be “experimental.”
I don’t like doing the same thing twice. I like to grow things in unexpected places. I like French intensive gardeing, square foot gardening and am really in to this straw bale gardening right now. I’d even like to try hydroponic gardening sometime, despite the fact that I have grave doubts about the quality and flavor of things grown in water (I believe in soil).
I have to admit, I rolled my eyes a lot when I first started seeing these upside-down gardens on TV. I checked out their website and good grief: people are really doing this thing!
Therefore, I am going to have make my very own topsy-turvy-upside-down tomato grower. Why? Because that is the experiment part. I don’t want to buy “their” cheap-looking plastic aparatus. I want to make my own ghetto version…from a big, plastic paint can. Yes, I do.
I’ll post pictures. I think it is going to be pretty cool! It’ll be like tomatoes raining down on me from heaven above!
If you are just start your large beds for square foot gardening, you really need the giant 4 cubic foot bag of vermiculite. It will loosen your heavy soil and improve drainage. But these days, I only need a small bag per year to get seeds going (vermiculite is like a sponge and keeps moisture right around that seed where it needs to be!).
Several people e-mailed asking where to find it. I used to get the big bags at Home Depot annually, where the garden manager told me they only ordered 4 per year. Now you should be able to find the smaller bags for about $3.50 at Home Depot, Lowe’s or WalMart – usually in the houseplant area. However, Home Depot has let a lot of people down this year providing only Perlite which is not as good and looks way less natural in the soil. But Lowe’s has it in stock.
Weird, but true find
I was passing by the winter clearance at Lowe’s, as well and found something labeled “Realistic Ash Bed.” It further explained:
For vented logs, place realistic ash bed material in burner pan and completely cover burner. May also be used to decorate fireplace floor.
And guess what it is??? That’s right folks: vermiculite. It doesn’t say it anywhere on the bag, but trust me: I know my vermiculite! It was about 99-cents a bag.
Good luck on the search…J
VERMICULITE: A mined mineral that expands when heated. Resembles mica in appearance. Great for seed germination, a clean, suitable source for rootings and cuttings, and good to use in potting mixes.
I hope this is not the work of the neighbor’s 2 cats (and btw-why is it OK for people’s cats to hang out in my yard, leaving their poo-poo and harassing my obviously “fraidy-cat” of a dog??). Why should my carefully prepared garden soil be an invitation for kitty-frolic? People, I implore you!
But for the past several mornings, my garden has been in disarray.
The onions have been pulled out (which I am able to plop back in: they are a hardy bulb plant and seem none-the-wiser that they have been messed with). And my 1″ high radish seedlings are half gone. Gone! Now the itty bitty tiny carrot seedlings were pulled out and of course, died in the sun (I am starting over), but half of my radish seedlings are gone without a trace. Not a leaf left lying. Some lettuce and mesclun, too. And I am blaming Bugs (as in Bunny)!
I have seen the little bunnies. Our neighborhood is full of them. Full! They apparently did not get the notice that this is no longer open farmland and that to stay will require a vote by the HOA.
You’d think our mangy Lady-in-the-Water*-looking dog would scare them away, but they still sneak back here – to my Eden, my little farm-in-the-dell, my back 40 (feet).
Peter had just better watch out…Mrs McGregor, aka Old Jeanie MacDonald
NOTE TO SELF: I will have veggies! God as my witness, I will have veggies!
*Referencing the “Lady in the Water” movie which was one of the lamest storylines ever from one of my favorite storytellers, M. Night Shyamalan (a bit of indulgence for the writer himself, I fear), but I still watched again recently because the characters are great and the setting is superb. Just a crappy story (but some great visual appeal), with a grass-mange dog-thing of some sort.
Elise-the-niece gave me a big bouquet of flowers for Mother’s Day (for being her Colorado mom-ish-type-fill-in-person) and some flower seeds and these adorable little garden markers she found in the dollar section at Target. They say you get 5 in the package, but mine had 6 – good times! They come with the marker and everything.
These are highly superior to the plastic picnic knives Gavin and I had used! Methinks we shall do some replacing…
I moved a twisted, decorative log aside so I could weed properly around the base of a small bush. I glanced over to find that a huge, fat, thick and hairy, black-spotted spider had crawled from her hole-in-the-log and was screaming obscenities at me. I think she was getting ready to jump on me and beat the crap out of me.
When I first started gardening (1997), I checked out the BEST book EVER from the library, Square Foot Gardening by Mel Bartholomew. See a 3-minute introduction in this youtube video:
The book has been updated and is better, all-new and improved they say. The early SFGs were not that great looking and are now much more attractive. But I still have the actual copy I first read – not because I stole it from the library! No, they sold it a few months later because some one had apparently watered it along with their garden. Silly person…Great sentimental value to me!
Mel, the Square Foot Gardener guru, says if you have never gardened, he can teach you all the principles of successful gardening in an hour. But if you have done “traditional” farm-style (rows and hoeing, for instance) gardening, it takes waaaaaaaay longer to teach you (can you say: hard-headed?). Luckily, I was a total novice, so I LOVE Mel! And I love all the produce I have been able to grow in very small spaces!
Mel taught me:
to plant seeds in vermiculite which acts as a sponge to hold the moisture around the seed so it will germinate quickly. Gavin and I planted lettuce, radishes and spinach that way exactly one week ago and it has already germinated! Tiny little sprouts are smiling up at me!
not to plant handfuls of seed and then go back and get rid of 2/3 of it (called “thinning”…there’s no thinning in SFG!). With Square Foot Gardening, you plant the right amount of seeds in a 1-foot space and enjoy every single thing that grows!
to plant smartly: 16 radishes at a time. I have 16 growing right now. In a few days I will plant 16 more, and so on. Why would I plant an entire package of seeds at once when I cannot eat them all at once?
weeding doesn’t have to take over your life because in a SFG, there is hardly any weeding!
and he taught me how to get the BEST tomato harvest ever! And that alone makes Mel one of my all-time favorite people.
This year I have discovered the Square Foot Gardening website along with instructions on how to grow potatoes. Mel’s current website: http://www.squarefootgardening.com/ …F U L L of incredible gardening knowledge! Good times!
Benefits of Square Foot Gardening:
Uses 80% less space per harvest.
Uses 90% less water.
Uses 95% less seeds!
You get 5 times the harvest
And? It makes me feel so green!
This is the method I am passing on to the grand-bebes!…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Never go another year without gardening!
pictured: my ragged copy of the first Square Foot Gardening book….still much used and greatly loved…
6:00 a.m. I am happy to report that the little pile of garden “debris,” some stray grass and old roots that I had pulled from one of the beds while “spring-cleaning” my 3′ x 3′ area the other day, has been gratefully discovered and is being used by a large group of small sparrows and a couple of fat robins. They, in turn, are digging through the little pile and whisking off what they can use to feather their nests.
I am happy to have been of service.
A glorious morning is shaping up…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: Leave the bat cave at regular intervals today – look directly into the sun.
NOTE: The Aspens are leafing out rapidly this week! The Purple-Leafed Sand Cherries are heavy with dainty, pink flowers – a bit late this year, but worth the wait. They knew to hide until the snow blizzard had passed.
If you try to plant too many things, you will be defeated. But if you start with one or maybe three things that you simply must grow for they cannot be purchased to perfection like you could grow them, then you will not only survive, you will thrive. And since you are only really counting on those one-to-three things, since they are getting all your love, you’ll end up realizing, Well, I could probably tuck a basil plant here since I am here frequently, and maybe a few radishes under the shade of the zucchini leaves. And soon you’ll be companion planting and actually doing more than you thought.
But if you go to the store and buy 37 packages of seeds, you are doomed. Doomed.
My favorites.
I started out gardening with ZERO experience in 1997. I am a city girl with a farmer’s heart – except that they have to pretty much work the farm 24/7 365 days a year and I am not quite that committed. I decided on tomatoes.
My Aunt Rosie always served us home grown tomatoes fresh from her garden and regardless of whatever else was served, they were like having the best Texas steak you have ever seen on your plate.
So when I decided to do it, I actually went to the library and checked out about 17 veggie garden books and one wholly devoted to tomatoes and read and read and read. The author of the tomato book basically said, “If you’re going to grow tomatoes, you should grow the best ones on the block. Do not go into it half-heartedly. Do everything possible to have the sweetest, biggest, most amazing tomatoes anyone has ever seen.” So, as a tribute to all the books I’d read about them, I actually planted about 17 tomatoes plants and they were the BEST tomatoes I had ever seen in my life! Now-the neighbors and everyone I knew dreaded seeing me coming, but I kept everyone I knew fully tomato’ed!
Other stuff I like to grow
Zucchini and yellow squash are great to grow for grilling. But they take a lot of room. I grow them mainly because I can feel haughty when I am in the store and they are selling for $1.00 each and I have just picked 7 or 8 of them for dinner. ALWAYS pick them young, slice in thick on the diagonal, toss them in extra-virgin olive oil, season and grill. You get great grill marks and they are delectable!
Peas are the gardener’s candy. Sugar snap peas are wonderful because you can eat the whole pod or not, as you wish. Great stir-fry. Very sweet. The grandbabies and I snack while we work!
Radishes. Don’t try these in the heat of summer. They get too hot. But they grow quickly and are very fresh and crisp early. Plant them outside now if you want.
Beans are easy. Every kindergartener starts out this way.
Peppers are great. They are pretty plants, too, so they make a great potted plant and there are just so many varieties you can’t get in the store.
I also like lettuces, and sometimes okra and the eggplant is so pretty (but I always forget how to fix them). So many directions a person could go. And don’t forget to tuck in some marigolds and nasturtiums while you’re at it. They’re edible, add some beautiful color and keep the icky bugs away to boot!
My real bottom line.
But there I go again – telling you too many things at once.
So, if I could only plant one thing, it would be tomatoes. Those transparent-barely-pink things on your fast food burgers are NOT tomatoes. Late summer, you can find some great tomatoes at the farmer’s market, but there is nothing, I mean nothing, like growing your own.
They are worth the effort, the babying, the prep, the watching, the watering and weeding! And if you can grow the tomato, which is THE most wondrous thing, you can now grow anything! Good times!
I Corinthians 15.35b The Message: We do have a parallel experience in gardening. You plant a “dead” seed; soon there is a flourishing plant. There is no visual likeness between seed and plant. You could never guess what a tomato would look like by looking at a tomato seed. What we plant in the soil and what grows out of it don’t look anything alike. The dead body that we bury in the ground and the resurrection body that comes from it will be dramatically different.
Tomatoes, of course! And maybe…
About three years ago I was in a meltdown during planting season. It was the middle of June and I hadn’t done anything. There sat my 3 4-foot-by-4-foot boxes: empty. I knew I had no strength to accomplish anything, to plant, but I needed something. I planted a purchased tomato plant in one. One had 3 green bean “volunteers” coming up, so I just put a trellis in it (seeds from the previous year had gone into the soil and were growing with no effort on my part) and I found a zucchini seed or two in my produce drawer in a little baggie and popped those in to the final garden square.
They filled my three boxes. They actually looked beautiful and tended to. They grew though I was barely functioning and every single day they gave me the hope I needed that normalcy would return and I would grow past the place I was in. Every day a new leaf or flowering would appear, I knew I was another day past the sorrow – that life would happen again.
Those were all I could handle. Yet, we had zucchini and beans and tomatoes that summer as if I had worked for them. It was like God tended my garden when I couldn’t. It was God and it was good…
So go easy on yourself and garden!…Jeanie
NOTE TO SELF: I am not behind, either.
pictured: scouting out last year’s tomatoes one evening…I spy!
