Will this really work?

My house is pretty nice now on the outside. The grass is growing green and lush, thanks to two years of scheduled fertilizer being spread and sprayed, plus umpteen gallons of water from the irrigation system, AND MOTHER NATURE. The lawn is manicured weekly by my "lawn boy with a Lawn Boy" (or maybe it's a Toro, but whatever). He comes when it gets shaggy, cuts and trims and cleans up, and is very unobtrusive about the whole thing.


Newly landscaped beds, especially around the tree, new entry way spiral spruces and rock replaced mulch in the planting beds.


My pond, with 13 gold fish living it it, and a water lily that bloomed for the first time this year!

Deck with pergula, the canopy isn't up today, no sun.

The only thing I'm missing is a vegetable garden. I'm wondering if this will work?



Vegetable gardening was the late Mr.'s pleasure to be sure. We had 160 acres in our country place, and you could pick any place to grow whatever out there. He made a little planting bed next to the house (by the water faucet, thank you!) where he put his garden. He was a master at growing tomatoes, peppers of all sorts, the hotter the better! One year, he planed some little scragly pepper plants (this was the summer he wasn't really doing that well), and those darn plants put out a bumper crop of peppers. One habenero plant had 60 little habeneros on it! You could only eat one a week of those things, your gut would be burned out if you ate more than that! But 60--they were hanging on the plant like grapes on a vine.

But now I live in the city, on a little postage stamp size lot. In this well manicured collection of landscaping, sod, stepping stones and patios that I'm living in now, there isn't a place for a vegetable garden. I'm not putting it out in the middle of my expensively sodded back yard! No way! But I am willing to try something intriguing, to see, "Will this really work?"

What I am talking about is the Topsy Turvy vegetable planter, AS SEEN ON TV! It is a heavy duty plastic container with a hole in the bottom. You feed the vegetable plant through the hole, use their sponge with a split in it to slip over the stem to hold it in place. The leaves and stem come out of the bottom and the roots go in the bag with garden soil around them. Then you hang the whole contraption up somewhere and hope for the best.

Of course the pictures on TV show a plant with tomatoes hanging on it like my husband's pepper plant, about 60 tomatoes on one plant. I'm just wondering how this contraption will hold all of that. It is downright heavy right now with the one plant, some soil and water. I bought a plant holder to attach it to my deck, where it will get sun, but be out of the way of other activities. It is bowing over the plant holder, and I have my doubts whether this will be sufficient to hold it when it gets its 60 tomatoes on it! We'll see. The Topsy Turvy came with a mighty industrial sized hook that you could screw into some substantial wood, but I don't really have a place like that to hang it. So I'm hoping my idea with the plant holder works.

I have some other worries about this. What will I do with it when we get our terrible wind storms? I can't bring it inside, where would I put it? Will the squirrels come up to steal the tomatoes? Will there really be enough sun in the place I hung it to actually make it grow and bear tomatoes?

As I say, I'm questioning if this will really work. If it does, my vegetable gardens of the future will include one tomato plant per year in the Topsy Turvy plant holder, and perhaps I'll add some peppers next year. We'll see, I'll keep you updated!