The Hanging Gardens aren’t just in ancient Babylon anymore. Now you can create your own hanging gardens with Topsy Turvy planters and hanging gardens. My personal favorite is the Topsy Turvy Tomato Planter, retailing for $8-$12. I love fresh homegrown tomatoes. I love gardens. I love gardening. Alas, our yard lacks adequate soil for proper gardening. We also have an invasive species that was allowed to grow free since long before we purchased our home. Now the creature has become a tree of monstrous proportions that has become intimate friends with the telephone lines. To cut it out would require Herculean effort and mammoth expense. We’ll leave that to task to the phone company. At any rate, gardening in our yard must be done on a very limited basis. That’s why we’ve fallen in love with patio gardening and hanging gardening. The Topsy-Turvy planters are perfect for folks like us, with limited yard availability who love to garden.
What is the Topsy Turvy Tomato Planter? It’s a hanging planter in which the vines, plants and fruit grows downward from a suspended planter. Click any of the words Topsy Turvy in this article to see images. From a horticultural perspective (pardon the pun) hanging or suspended planters are an excellent idea. In the usual plant, the stem must absorb moisture from the roots at the base. With a Topsy Turvy planter, the roots are at top of the plant. Gravity assists greatly with the circulation and flow of plant nutrients. Hanging your Topsy Turvy planter in a sunny, warm area ensures that the leaves and fruit receive plenty of sunlight for photosynthesis.
Topsy Turvy Planters make excellent gardening opportunities for apartment dwellers, mobile home dwellers and those with small, uncultivated yards. I encourage homeschoolers and classroom teachers to purchase and start Topsy Turvy planters. If possible, begin a small traditional garden in which plants grow upward versus downward. Assign students to record growth rates, possible insect issues, growing and care issues, for both plant styles. A comparison of Topsy Turvy plants gardens and traditional plants makes excellent science exploration. I recommend creating a science fair display to demonstrate how the Topsy Turvy planter works and if it indeed shows better growth rate than a regular planter. Set out a sample of tomatoes if possible to see if students and visitors can taste a difference. This is the perfect green science lesson.
For more on gardening, science and green, visit me at www.greencrafts.blogspot.com and www.freelessonplans4u.blogspot.com and www.ladygreenwise.blogspot.com.
