How to Plant Tomatoes Upside Down in a Hanging Basket

If you like to garden but are hindered by your soil, lack of space for a garden, or animals getting in your potted plants, this is the idea solution. Plant tomato and pepper plants so they hang upside down from common every day buckets. Benefits include no weeding, great soil, they are impossible to over water, and easy to move as circumstances require.

Plants grown upside down also produce more fruit, take up less space, and require less water.

Difficulty:

Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need

• 1-2 gallon plastic jug with handle
• Good quality planting soil
• Plant
• Knife
• Scissors
• Hanging basket liner

1. 

   Remove plant from container it came in. Gently work soil around root ball free until you have the thinnest possible circumference possible.

2. 

   Cut a hole in the center of the bottom of the bucket slightly larger than the root ball of your plant.

3. 

   Cut a pie wedge from your basket liner and then cut a small hole in the center of the liner.

4. 

   Push the root system through the bucket from the outside in.

5. 

   Place the basket liner inside the bucket and position to wrap around the root ball and close up the bucket opening as much as possible. Leave a little growth room for the thickness of the stalk.

   If the pot your plant originally came in was biodegradable; tear it into pieces and add them inside the liner to help support the plant.

6. 

   Fill the bucket with good quality potting/gardening soil

7. 

   Cover the top of the bucket with the remaining piece of liner to keep the soil from drying out to quickly. Hang and water.

Tips & Warnings

• The type of bucket you use will limit the size of the plant. One gallon buckets will not hold enough soil or nutrients to allow the plant to grow as large as it should.

• Suggestions for small containers: 1-gallon ice cream buckets, Lego buckets, larger Easter egg pails, water pails from children's play sets.

• Suggestions for larger containers: 5-gallon paint buckets, cat/dog food buckets, and mop buckets.

• You'll have to rethink how you react to weather forecasts; too rainy, windy, or cold? Just bring your plants inside until safe to return outside.