As Seen on TV! A Mixed Bag - the Topsy-Turvy Planter

It finally got to me - that over-and-over-again TV ad for the Topsy-Turvy Planter, that goofy looking bag with a giant crop of healthy, ripe, red tomatoes growing OUT THE BOTTOM! I don't know about you, but I have never bought anything from one of those TV ads - on the contrary, it has always been my policy to automatically assume that whatever contraption they're shouting about is, just by definition, a worthless piece of crap. But this one got to me: "Why not?", I asked myself, and "I can't see any reason why it wouldn't work."  As I was starting up a new vegetable garden after not having had one for many years, I had one thing on my mind: tomatoes.

As a veteran gardener, I figure I knew about most kinds of crazy garden stuff; I've gardened since the toxic chemical-enriched Eisenhower years, been through the organic gardening wave of the '60s & early '70s, when I fancied myself as a sturdy back-to-the-land type of pioneer woman, even though my actual gardens in those days were whatever narrow strip of wasteland I could carve out alongside of my various funky rented apartments. I knew all about plant pairings to minimize bug problems (in my mind it isn't even possible to grow tomatoes or peppers or eggplants without an edging of marigolds and basil), and how to trap slugs with beer (a waste of beer - you can trap slugs with all kinds of less appealing stuff!). But upside-down tomatoes? Never heard of it. But look at these old guys in the ad, too feeble to bend down & pick a tomato off of a regular plant, yet here they are, hauling these huge ripe beauties right out of thin air in front of them, with no work!! No gophers, no hornworms, no pests, no back-breaking digging!! Dangling at eye level - these old geezers don't even have to get down off the porch to have perfect tomatoes!

So the question "Why not?" preyed on my mind, until eventually I settled on an "eh, what could it hurt? how bad could it be? and for only $19.99 I can get 2 - but wait, if I call right now I can get 4 for the same price! Plus some bizarre and utterly useless tomato-slicing-holder - free? that does it! Quick, gimmee the phone!" approach. Ordering by phone turned out to be ridiculously time-consuming, and then I was conned by the computer-bot that took me through the ordering process into buying some additional worthless items...but I guess I can't blame Mr. Topsy-Turvy for that! By the time I was done, I had managed to parlay this $19.99 purchase into nearly a hundred bucks.  NOT quite the practically-free investment I'd counted on! This must be why they advertise stuff on TV - and also the reason why I must never again be allowed to order anything from those call-now ads.

OK, so it took forever for the planters to arrive - or at least a good 6 - 8 weeks. I was just on the point of giving up on the whole business and figuring I'd been utterly conned when they finally arrived. They said when I ordered that it would take that long, but I just put that off as an abundance of caution on their part; in this instance it was true. So here's my first word of advice: if you are going to order them, order way early, or it will be too late, at least if you live in anyplace that doesn't have a year-round tomato season like here in my zone-5 garden.

Assembling and filling these planters is a lot more work than the TV ad lets on - no way could the old duffers they showed shuffling around in their bedroom slippers plucking the upside-down tomatoes dangling before their eyes have filled & hung those babies!  It's actually kind of a fussy business - you have to hold the infant tomato plant at the base of the plastic-tarp bag and snuggle its roots as far up as you can, while slowly & carefully filling your potting soil into the relatively floppy planter. Harder than you'd think to do, because these two activities are using your two hands - but you simultaneously need to support the hanging bag. Ideally, you could hang the bag at a reachable level first, but still, getting the soil into the bag without breaking the plant off at its tender little neck is a lot more work than filling a conventional planter. But I am stubborn, if not strong, and eventually I got 2 bags planted. In one, I just put one patio-type tomato and a basil plant, and in the second I tried a couple of different cherry tomatoes and a basil plant or two. It took all afternoon, and quite a lot of potting soil (I think I used 2 40-lb. bags, but that sounds like an awful lot - maybe they're 40-qt. bags, I forget; anyway, a lot more than you'd think.) I used a mix with an organic timed-release plant food in it, because I figured that the frequent from-the-top watering they would require would wash nutrients out of the soil pretty quickly. Expensive!

The planters are very heavy, once planted. I had to have help to hang them from the wooden beams of my back porch. They come with a sort of swivel-type gizmo, and a funnel-shaped top that forces the water to go into the center (more or less) of the planter. You have to have something very sturdy to hang them from; I can easily imagine them pulling down anything less sturdy than the strong wooden beams I had for them, although I have since seen a pole stand you can supposedly anchor in the ground to hang them from.  Given my lifelong inability to drive any pole, of any sort, solidly and straightly into the ground, let alone one that could possibly support a couple of these giant bags of dirt and water and tomatoes, I don't hold out too much hope for that succeeding.

This was all very exciting - but the question remained: would it work? Well, in very short order I had blossoms all over the place, and the suspense built. The plants grew down for a little ways, and then turned up, as plants actually must do to obey the laws of nature and phototrophism - tops towards the sun, roots toward the center of the earth. These hanging upside-down tomatoes seemed to take longer to set fruit than they should have, certainly longer than the ones set firmly in my full-sun garden.

And here comes my next word of advice: you must water them often, and regularly, because they dry out much faster than they would in-ground. With tomatoes in particular, irregularity in water supply can lead to major problems in setting and ripening the fruits. I needed to get a wand attachment for the hose in order to reach up high enough to water them, which resulted in water running down to my armpits every single time I watered, sometimes even twice a day (there's a whole 'nother review - surely all watering wands cannot have this dampening side-effect?).

All summer long I watched them with great interest, not to mention amusement. One thing I will say for these upside-down planters: they are definitely an never-ending source of discussion with everyone who sees them. Seriously, my UPS guy kept a close eye on this whole business. By the end of the summer, I felt like I should have installed one of those devices they have in museums where you press a button and get the recorded history of civilization or the workings of the combustion engine in 45 seconds or less. 

OK, let's cut to the chase: did they deliver? Well, I'd have to say that the results were a firm "sort of". Eventually, the plants coughed up a few small, watery, tasteless tomatoes. I think the major fault for the less-than-perfect results is at least partly my own - because the beams I hung them from were under the overhang of the porch roof, I don't think they got enough sun. The plants in normal pots did much better, just a couple of feet away. This could be a kind of tricky business, finding a place that really gets a full, unsheltered hit of sun, yet where there's enough strength and structure to support them. (Did I mention that they're very heavy? Even without the 60 lbs of tomatoes they could theoretically produce.)  It is true that they were not bothered by bugs or animals (although the hummingbirds took an interest in them), but I'd have to say that this is a far from ideal way to grow vegetables.

Will I try them again this year? Maybe, but not for tomatoes, at least not in the same spot. If I go to the bother of planting & filling & tending them again, I think I'll try less sun-dependent plants. The basil that I stuck in just to keep the tomatoes company actually fared pretty well. Certainly I wasn't treated to the heaps of mouth-watering veggies, with no effort on my part, that the TV ads portrayed - but then again, I've known for the last 50+ years that rarely does life deliver exactly what TV ads promise! 

Alas, as amusing as the Topsy-Turvy Planter may be, it can't deliver the Garden of Eden before the Fall right to your back porch. I'd say it earned its cost in entertainment and experimental value, but it's not much of substitute for the miracle of sticking a plant in the ground, keeping a casual eye on it for a couple of months, and then picking that perfect juicy, warm, fragrant First Tomato right off the vine - even if you do have to bend down to get it.