I think determinate varieties of tomatoes grow quite well upside down, with most of the failures coming from growing indeterminate varieties. Here's a photo from a guy who tried both ways, and what he had to say about it. "I'm following your upside-down planter project with great interest & thought you may be interested in my experiment. My regular garden tomato row soil has become so plagued with disease (wilt & blight) that this is the last year for quite awhile that I'll plant there. I figured that I'd try some hanging plants to see how they'd do, my trials with pots have failed miserably. I got one Topsy Turvy planter & planted a Goliath in it May 6th & at the same time planted a Big Beef in a bag of topsoil just to see what it would do. The Big Beef grew so well, I decided to find a way to hang it where there was full sun all day. I just bought a cheap landing net, drilled a hole in the handle & hung it on a clothesline pole. This plant is now far & away my biggest, healthiest plant (in-ground or hanging). The upside-down plant is also doing well (both have 4 tomatoes on) but the stem on the bagged plant is much thicker & the plant seems much more robust. I don't know if this is due to the plant being more vigorous growing up toward the sun versus growing down (with the help of gravity!) in the Topsy Turvy but I'm leaning toward planting most of my plants that way next season. I also experimented with planting mediums - there's sphagnum moss only in the upside-down planter & a mix of moss & potting soil in the middle bag (a mature Husky Red that I just planted last weekend, it matures in 65 days so it should do well this late). There's no disease on any of them, while the in-ground plants are starting to yellow already. Didn't mean to take up your time but I thought I'd share my project results so far, I'll keep tabs on your updates. If you'd like I can send you pics later in the season when "the jury is in" on which ones do the best. Thanks for your time & good luck - we all need a bit of that growing tomatoes!" -Steve in Central Indiana" Granny Here is a link that might be useful:

No, the I found the 100 gallon tank basically free at a garage sale, and figured I'd just throw it in under my workbench for thermal mass. Then it occurred to me that maybe I could raise Tilapia in it? I'd probably have to heat it with some large aquarium heaters, but then the heat just escapes into the greenhouse right? We'll see how that goes... New question for everyone: I'm realizing now that I did not account for heat/air circulation within the greenhouse (when the vents are closed) and what a temp difference there is between the peak and the ground - I need to pull that heat down somehow. I don't really want to take up valuable roof space (I'm planning on hanging plants) with a large ceiling or even rotating fan for circulation, so my plan is this: Run a couple 6-inch round ducts/PVC pipes along the rafters, from the peak down to the ground on the opposite side (single-sloped roof - see pic link), and install inline duct fans in each to suck the air from the peak down. With each inline fan rated at 160 CFM (320 CFM total), and a greenhouse size of 1536 CF, this should circulate the entire structure in about 5 minutes (in theory). One day I'd like to perhaps dig out my planting beds and install a base of rock/gravel and run the heated air through that to better store heat, but that's not this year... Questions: 1) Where along the ducts/pipes is the optimal place to install the inline fans? Top (pushing air down), bottom (pulling air down) or middle? 2) I've thought it might be nice to instead of simply having an open end at each duct/pipe that simply draws and exhausts air at a single point, that it might be better to install a perpendicular pipe at each end, that ran the length of the greenhouse, and was drilled with large holes that would more evenly draw and exhaust the air. However, will this create to much airflow "resistance", and dramatically reduce the circulation rate? I suppose I could always up the duct/pipe size and fans to compensate, but you gotta draw a line somewhere... 3) Anyone ever done anything like this? Here is a link that might be useful: Greenhouse Photos

I can give you several reasons: There is the sheer novelty factor. "Gee, I didn't know you could do that. Let's try it." Related to that is the conversation piece factor. "Look, Susie! Granny is growing tomatoes upside down." Then there is limited space factor. If you live in an apartment and have only a small balcony, the chance to grow a hanging veggie is a plus. I have been in this situation in the past. In most cases though, I think it is the novelty/something-cheap-to-try-for-fun factor. I am starting 55+ items from seed this year. Unfortunately I find it hard to ruthlessly pinch off and compost extra seedlings. So I always run into the question of where to put all these plants. So I always have a shortage of cultivated places to put things. I always grow more tomatoes plants than I am supposed to and so I threw one of these into my cart, thinking I could put one of my extra tomatoes in it. I can't imagine that there would be any horticultural advantage to doing so, but it means I don't have to toss a plant I have fostered into the compost pile.

If the window gets lots of light, and its pretty warm in your house, the upside down deal should work out indoors. Never tried it inside myself, just a guess. I've had good success planting cherry types inverted in a five gallon bucket outdoors. Works out kinda cool in the bucket because you have all the surface area at the top for additional planting room. Last year I planted some extra wave petunias which ended up cascading over the sides and blooming well past the tomato on the bottom had been completely harvested.