Also, if you are short on space, I recommend you check out this blog: http://lifeonthebalcony.com/ Also try http://the6x8garden.blogspot.com/

Both are good blogs to pick up ideas for gardening in smaller spaces.

But in comparing my plant to the pictures of the ones in the ads, I can’t see how those “ad pictures” could have possibly been grown upside down. They “look” like plants that were grown in the proper orientation, and then turned upside down for the picture. Don’t absolutely know that to be true, but it would be my guess.

If you have room to grow a hanging plant, I would suggest a regular hanging planter, and just hang it a couple of feet lower, and use strings to tie up the vines. I haven’t tried that, but based on my experience, I would be inclined to believe that the results would be better. And probably much cheaper than the topsy turdy.

The hanging containers were a nightmare. First off, these end up being incredibly heavy. We had each on an iron shepard’s hook and both bent the pole’s enough to make us nervous all season. I suggest a heavy-capacity hook deeply embedded in solid wood framing on your house or eaves. They’re also ugly too, so we expended effort to pretty them up. The plants themselves fruited late because they expended most of their energy contorting up into the light, knotting into themselves and up around the planter. The fruit they produced was smaller than the raised bed plant and about half the yield of that plant, even though they were essentially the exact same plants.

Our cherry tomato in the small garden container went nuts. Just do that and trellis it against a well. Ours had about a foot-wide swath to grow up between our gate and garage door. Worked like a charm.

These planters are a waste of time and money. If anything, do it DIY and don’t buy them.

I think they’re aesthetically pretty and they seem to make people who walk by really happy. If I did it again I would spray paint the buckets all green just because.

I would only recommend this with cherry tomatoes. Of course, plant a few different varieties so they become ripe at different times. Also consider when you’re hanging them what angle the sun is going to be at in the middle of August.

This summer I’m making a few self-watering containers.

Mark, whatever you should do, you should make it. I’m a little surprised that such an advocate of maker culture would be buying these and buying pre-made self-watering containers, since you could be advocating for all of us to make these things!

Worked just fine. We got lots of tasty fruit. We didn’t compare it scientifically to a normal pot to say if it worked better or worse. Hung it outside off the corner of our deck and light was never a problem. Our 10 yr old made sure it got enough water.

It was gifted to us and seemed a reasonable success. We’ll use it again this year.

“Tomato Tree” http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/North_America/United_States/South/Florida/Orlando/photo184410.htm

My local (and Mark, your old hometown) greenhouse Sturtz & Copeland has a cherry tomato trained across several rafters strung with bird netting and this is exactly the shade structure/fruiting vine that I want to emulate. I was thinking I could even place my planter/5 gallon bucket up near the rafters so it doesn’t take up ground space and can get going on the netting right away.

We had to take out a tree this winter and I’m looking forward to trying this system as a replacement for the shade on our deck.

So growth wise, I can confirm what others say, they try to grow up and around the hanging planter bucket. Eventually they make it and start producing fruit. A bit of a tangled mess of stems, but it worked.

To maximize space, use long rectangular planters rather than a bunch of circular pots. Hanging pots are also a good space saver – and tomatoes can also be trained along netting, as previous posters indicate. Just don’t waste your money on any of these “miracle” growing containers!

The tomatoes grown in my greenhouse, although performing not as well as they did the previous year, produced much better than the topsy turvy, which grew to be about 6 inches (15cm) over the couse of the entire warm season, and yielded zero tomatoes.

I have had quite a bit of success with the upside down tomato garden these last 2 seasons. They did do better in my conservatory where it was a bit wamer, I live in the UK but my upside down garden and planter also produced quite a bit of fruit.
A good review and tutorial can be found at the Practical Home and Garden Upside Down Tomato Garden review http://www.practicalhomeandgarden.com/the-upside-down-tomato-garden. There is also a tutorial there to create your own planter.

Putting them together they seem pretty sturdy and quality made but I think the real secret is in the type of soil used – the instructions says not to use regular potting soil but instead a more loam type container soil that they sell (of course).

The water resevoir is really nothing more than a plastic tub that sits on top with some fabric strips that lead from the water bucket into the soil to act as the capillary system.

We’re at high altitude and our growing season is only around 80 days so what I really need is one of the geodesic dome greenhouses featured here last week. Too bad I don’t have a spare 5G’s to shell out like that guy did.

I really like the idea in the comments above, of adding something to the bucket to retain some water. I suspect that would work great.

We didn’t have the problem of flooding that someone else reported, because the lid goes back on the bucket before hanging. (!!)