Can you grow a Topsy Tomato?
Posted in tomato, topsy tomato on March 29th, 2010 by admin – 1 CommentWhat is a Topsy Tomato?
It is a radical system that ”grows your tomato plants upside-down, so there’s no digging, weeding or bending over.”
A plastic sleeve contains soil and water. The live plant hangs with the topsy tomato beneath the plastic sleeve.
“The sun warms the planter like a greenhouse, so the root system explodes inside.”
“from the roots to the fruit.”
Expect :
“up to 30 pounds”
“up to four weeks earlier”
This sounds crazy, but I have always been curious as to weather is works.
Popular Science put this to the test.
“Comparison plantings between Topsy Turvy tomatoes, tomatoes grown in a second novelty product called an Earthbox, and a third batch grown in the traditional dirt method popularized over several thousand years of agriculture. ”
What does the inventor say?
“I’m telling you, you can’t miss with this product,” Topsy Turvy inventor Bill Felknor says. We met Felknor at the National Hardware Show, where he showed us a scrapbook filled with gargantuan tomato canopies dangling from Topsy Turvys, the fruits like studded rubies showing through thickets of fuzzy vines. Page after page, Felknor’s Polaroid testimonials proved the product’s efficacy
What did they have to say?
The topsy tomato didn’t fare to well…
“A stormy season toppled the Topsy Turvy, stifling a promising start. Tomatoes planted in the earth survived and thrived. ”
But when we set up a Topsy Turvy rig earlier this summer, well, let’s just say our results wouldn’t make the Felknor photographic hall of fame.
“Topsy tomato plant at 21 inches long. By comparison, a plant buried in the ground the same day had already reached 32 inches in length. ”
Too much trouble…. “I found it to be too much trouble compared with in-ground planting.”
So there is the topsy tomato.
