Ingenious tomato planter turns gardening upside down! Thanks to a whole new direction in growing tomatoes, your crop will be bigger, better tasting, healthier, and easier to grow than ever before. You can water, feed, trim and harvest without bending or kneeling--and since your crop is upside down and will never touch the ground, staking, caging, bacteria, ground rotting, fungus and small animals become problems of the past. It's the perfect gift for any gardener. Great for those who live in apartments or who have small backyards. Water and fertilize through the built-in top funnel; trim and harvest at chest height! Also for cukes, peppers, flowers. Just add your soil and plants. Topsy-Turvyยฟ Planter makes it easy to grow tomatoes and vegetables because it eliminates the need for a backyard garden plot.

What a rip off, 10 dollars at Home Depot! By Meehlticket (Fairhope, Alabama, USA)
I bought two of these YESTERDAY and they cost me $12.98 each, TODAY they are under $10. I checked with Home Depot last night and realized they have them for $10. Dumb me, I should have read the reviews. We'll see how they work for me in our hot and humid summers.
2010-03-17

topsy turvy is groovy By Jerry in Texas (Texas)
Had great results with both cherry and regular tomatoes last year, so going to only go upside down this year.
2010-03-03

2 Words ... Don't Bother!! By April
If you're thinking at all about buying this product, I strongly suggest you don't. I thought I would give it a try. Not having to stake my plants sounded great. Next year, I'm going back to planting my tomatoes right side up.

The planter itself is kind of a spendy investment. Especially if you plan to have more that just one plant. If you're like me and don't have the option of hanging them on your house or from your porch, you also have to invest in shepherds hooks. But the planters were so heavy that I ended up having to sandwhich the hooks between a couple fence posts to keep them from bending. Then I also had to buy bricks to try to keep them from coming out of the ground. And the first stiff breeze (or squirrel) that comes along, downs the whole thing, breaking the plants off at the base. Which means having to start over again with all new plants. In the end, I ended up investing a lot more money than I had ever intended.

Supposedly this planter helps you get bigger plants with higher yields. That is not the case. What plants I had that survived, looked terrible and produced little. Some never bore fruit at all. I think part of the problem is that they dry out too fast. The sun may warm the soil (which supposedly helps that plants grow better,) but all the moisture evaporates and escapes through the big opening in the top. The soil inside bakes into a nice brick. Which doesn't help the plant to grow.

The package says that you can use the Topsy Turvys for multiple years. Not so! They were so deteriorated at the end of the season, that when I went to pull them down, my fingers went right through the sides. All that money for 3 months.

Skip the Topsy-Turvy. They are too much cost for too little benefit. Buy a pot, a cage, and a spool of twine. Then use the money you save to take your family to the movies.
2010-02-28

5 Gallon Bucket Works Better By Anna Surbeck (Hoquiam, WA)
Like other reviewers have said, you can make a better one out of one of those reusable grocery bags. There is a reason the new upside down planters have openings on the sides. The water drains down the plant causing rot. The cables and hardware rusted. The green printed bag faded in the sun.
2010-02-23

Terrible! By T. Spergel (Naples, FL)
We planted 3 tomato plants and got 4 cherry tomatos from one of them. The planter itself completely disintergrated before the season was through. I won't even bother to plant the strawberries in the "free" hanging planter. This was a horrible investment. Also it needs to be watered very often. Certainly didn't work for us as advertised.
2010-02-21