Topsy Turvey Attempt #2

Last year we bought a Topsy Turvey tomato garden. We were pretty excited about it and really looked forward to the bounty of tomatoes we were surely going to receive. After holding out for the entire summer, diligently watering and fertilizing everyday, we ended up with one and a half tomatoes. A half, you ask? Our first tomato sprouted sometime in July and was barely the size of a plum. The second tomato weirdly grew in October, and never got very big, nor did it turn red (hence the reason it's only really half a tomato). It actually played a funny part in our Halloween pumpkin carvings.

We were convinced that we had purchased the wrong kind of tomato plant from Wal-Mart, and also possibly that we started too late in the season, as it was mid-June when we hung up the planter. Oh...we were so wrong. This last weekend we went to the farmers market here in Bloomington. It is by far one of our favorite things to do during the Spring, Summer, and Fall here. (There's nothing fun to do in the winter.) Every Saturday morning we venture down to buy veggies and honey sticks. Sometimes we ride our bikes and transport our sweet corn on the cob home in our backpacks. Very fun. Well, since this year's market is still early in the season we were pretty limited to what we could buy. But a good tomato plant was priority number 1. So we found some farmer people and asked what the best type of tomato plant was for the Topsy Turvey. He recommended the Celebrity variety. We told this farmer about our adventure from last summer. His first question: "Was your planter in full sun?" Our answer: "Uh...........no." His response: "That's why you only had 1 tomato. Full sun equals many tomatoes." Of course it makes complete sense. But we live in an apartment complex and don't have many options for a tomato plant in the front of our building. So we hung it from our back deck. Unfortunately there is a rather LARGE pine tree that is adjacent to our building. It provides shade over our deck everyday of the year. The corner of the deck where we hung our planter gets about 2 hours of sunlight a day.

So this year we splurged and bought the shepherds hook thing that lets you hang planters. Below are some pictures of the 2011 hanging garden. We also learned that you can grow strawberries in a pot. So we are trying our thumbs at that as well. We are glad that they have double hooks. We have critter that probably lives under the back deck, but it likes to venture around the front of the building and eat the dandelions. We didn't want it eating our strawberries too, so we devised a way to hang that pot. This is one sturdy shepherds hook.



We look forward to our bounty this year, and hope we can actually grow something. One day we want a large garden that can give us lots food. We're interested in being self-sustaining with some of our food. So our strawberries and tomatoes this year will be a good indicator of whether or not we have green thumbs.