Experimental Gardening: Hanging Tomatoes

Hanging Tomato Basket With Fruit

On another snowy Saturday, I was again watching the Irish garden show Grow Cook Eat, this one was on growing tomatoes from hanging baskets! I love those beautiful hanging basket floral arrangements where the basket is just overflowing with flowers, they are a beautiful addition to any home garden, but they are also crazy expensive to put together because of all the plants you need to buy to make it full and lush! I have several old wire baskets but because they were so expensive to fill, I’ve not done anything with them for the last few years.

So, when I was watching Grow Cook Eat, which is on Amazon Prime, my attention perked up because I had the baskets! Being the over achiever that I am (sometimes) I decided to start this experiment from scratch and see if I could grow my tomatoes from seeds. I picked up some seed packets from City Floral, one of my favorite garden stores in Denver, and set to work getting my seedlings stared. It was pretty simple, I saved my plastic plant containers from the previous summer and filled them with good garden soil and placed a seed in each little container and proceeded to line our windowsills in the family room (they get the most light) with my starter plants. Once my seedlings sprouted, I transplanted them to a little larger pot and placed them in the green house until Spring.

Once we were past the last frost, about mid-May after Mother’s Day, I brought the tomato plants out to first get acclimated and then to plant in the baskets. I should note that the plants grown from seeds were spindly so I didn’t have too high of hopes for the experiment but figured what the hey, I might as well give it a go! After they had been outside for a few days and were acclimated, I set to work filling the hanging basket with more garden soil and then I placed three plants spacing them in a triangular pattern along the edges of the basket and braced the stems with little wooden stakes. As they grew the stems filled out and I took the stakes out so they could start to drape over the edges of the basket. I watered them every morning all summer long. Happy days… first the little yellow flowers sprouted followed by fruit and I’ve had cherry tomatoes from about July to September with them still giving me their precious gifts even now. 

If you are a lover of tomatoes but short on space, I highly encourage you to give hanging baskets a go… they are both beautiful and super economical as the only thing you need to invest in is a packet of seeds and some soil and a basket if you don’t have one handy.

Hanging Tomato Basket