Wednesday, June 3, 2009

There's Been a Hangin' in These Here Parts

We decided to try making our own hanging baskets for tomatoes this year, loosely based on the infomercial kind. We made ours out of 5-gallon buckets. We'd decided to hang them from the posts around the greenhouse. Hooband reinforced the posts using cable to support the weight. This picture is before we planted:
We also decided to mix our own soil for the pots and Hooband had the great idea of using the concrete mixer to do it. Hooray Hooband! We wound up mixing 3 different batches from compost, sand, sawdust, potting soil and dirt. The mixer saved us a LOT of time and effort:

I used a garden hook to hang the pot while I planted it. I would have been straining to get them planted if I'd kept them on the posts, and since the plant would be coming out the bottom of the pot I couldn't exactly put the pot on the ground or a table:
I fitted each plant with some black landscaping fabric (you can see it wrapped around the rootball in the top left corner below), which I flattened out over the bottom of the pot after the plant was fitted through the hole. This was in order to keep the soil in while allowing the water to drain out. I was more than a little concerned about fitting a few of the plants through the holes. You can see the plant in this picture is pretty leafy:
But somehow I wound up getting it fitted with little trouble:

You can plant tomatoes way up the stem, those hairs along the stem will turn into roots. So, that's what I did; I kept adding soil, adjusting the root ball, more soil, until the stem was several inches up inside the pot.

Even by the next morning you can see the plant trying to right itself. I'm not sure how these planters will work. I can't help but think we're setting up and All-U-Kan-Eat Buffet for the deer. I'm also a little concerned about the amount of moisture they seem to be retaining, but we'll deal with that if it becomes a problem.


2 comments:

YD, sometimes with ♥June and ♥Angel Samantha said...

I want to try that next year. I'll be following your post to see if this works.

Me voici ∞ Here I am said...

Neat-o!

Sorry I missed it!

You know, that Hooband of yours does have some bright ideas.