I think I have created a monster

Here is the latest picture of my stacker tomato's........two early girls planted in the top pot of a 4 pot stack. I have probably trimmed it too much but I wonted you to see the size of the stalks. Batteries went dead before I could photo the 5 tomato's growing low on the plants and others forming higher up. Erratic spring weather caused them to drop their first blooms but they look to be taking off now. Their roots have grown down through the top pots drain holes and have the two top pots locked together and the roots are beginning to grow on down into the 3rd pot down.

That is a 6 foot tall fence behind them so I guesstimate them to be up about 8 foot high now. I have already added two 16 inch extensions to the stacks center pole and looks like I need to add at least one more. I will tie those top vines to the center pole one more time and then start cutting them off cause I only have a short step ladder. :-). Those are determinate tomato's. I guess I should have let them drape down rather than grow up.

Here are the sunflowers growing from top stacker pots. I did not realize that sunflowers are such prolific bloomers but I keep dead heading that one on the left and it keeps pumping out more blooms. The one on the right is advertized to grow to 6 foot tall and looks like it is about that now. Im not sure my little step ladder will get me up high enough to dead head that one.

I have not got all my EZgro pots mounted on poles yet. You can see how many drain holes each pot has. This gives you an idea of how easy it is for plants with aggressive root systems to send roots down from one pot into another. To facillitate that you need to fill each pot level full with grow mix so that the bottom of one pot is in good contact with the grow mix in the lower pot.

One good thing about growing in containers is that you can play games and shift them around. An old set of house steps makes a good place to display 36 strawberry plants growing in NJ stackers surrounded by blue and red salvia and red and white wax begonia. Dont tell me I got the wrong color combinations.......I know I am tone deaf when it comes to such stuff. This is my first year with the begonia's and they are really nice in that you can choose different ones with different color of foliage and different color flowers. Now if I only knew what I was doing when it comes to combining colors.........................

This pole looks pretty drab.....but it is one of the most important in my garden. It is a nursery pole with seeds planted and growing. I have about 500 plant sites to fill as the season goes along so more plants have to be coming along in a "nursery" like this pole. Top pot was just planted with mini-bell bell peppers and the other pots have scabiosa, alyssum and nigella.

For those of you that are new to growing with stacked planters, rest assured that you can plant them much more intensively than you, or your uninformed neighbor, may think. My 4 pot poles have 16 plant sites but in some of them I may have anywhere from 25 to 30 plants growing. This can vary depending on what type plants your are growing of course. I know I overdo it sometimes but what the heck, it is a learning process.

I winter sowed some flower seed and one thing that germinated and grew real good were the trailing phlox plants of different colors you see on this pole. I just kept transplanting them to different poles, even poking them into some sites where something else was already growing. The result has been really pleasant.......little phlox blooms poking out hither and yon where I didn't even remember planting them. Next year, I will have more of them.

The top of this pole is probably planted much to heavy in bachelor buttons but this is basically a hydroponic method of gardening where intensive planting will succeed if the grow mix is quick draining, air breathing, and properly watered and fertilized.

This pole has already be the home of 10 freesia plants which bloomed out and I removed them and transplanted some other stuff in their place. There are some convovulus poking out of that lower pot.

I have poked little chive plants in various sites on many of my grow poles. They take up very little space and dont interfere with anything else growing there and they will make a pretty flower soon. I may overwinter them in the poles.........or I may pry them out to repot and over winter them. I poked onion sets into various sites also and those have been harvested as green onions. Some other early season greens have been harvested and the poles poked full of some kind of transplants.

I am not a very well organized gardener......but I can see where some very knowledgeable and organized gardener could keep a few grow poles pumping out stuff all year long.

Whoops..........I forgot the picture of the old steps with the strawberries and other stuff growing there. Here 'tis.

Here is another 'nursery' area where I continuously poke seeds into grow mix so that I will always have plenty of transplants to fill the sites on my grow poles. Vegetables grow and are harvested and I need something to poke into that empty site. Some flowers only bloom in the spring time so once their bloom time is finished, they get jerked out and composted and something else takes their place in the grow pole. No telling what it will be........considering how disorganized I am.......but it can make for some interesting results.

I do not fool around with such things as grow lights, south facing windows, heating pads and other expensive stuff. It is fun to do and I am not knocking it and if I lived in a shorter growing season I would be doing it but I am going with the flow here with a long growing season. After the last frost, I splatter seed in all directions. Most seeds will germinate and grow, even in some very adverse conditions, if I get out of the way and dont screw things up. After all, mother nature knows how to do this stuff. When my seeds germinate, they are looking at full sun.....or rain......whatever mother nature throws at them. They will "harden off" or die. The strong live and I transplant them to the poles as necessary.

I have slowly accumulated quite a few stacked containers over a period of years and next year, I will do all my seed starting in the grow poles. One grow pole can raise enough transplants to fully plant quite a few other grow poles. Seeds start better in the grow poles also.

I will be 77 years of age in two days.......May 29th. Thankfully, I am still getting around pretty good but I am getting set up so that I can garden from a wheel chair or a motorized scooter if necessary. The stacked containers are an integral part of that plan.

Jay: Very colorful, I love the flower arrangements you have planned out there, my question is how big a ladder you got to pick your tomatoes when they are ripe? LOL
joy

Wow! Jay, you're a madman! I'd say you've got a real green thumb there! I assume you've got a nice, tall ladder, too!

This message was edited May 27, 2009 10:52 PM

Not much planning taking place anymore. When a site comes open on a pole, I just put whatever plants I have available or whatever seasonal plants are available from the local nurseries in there.

Hey Jay! Great pics as usual. I love the "Tomato Tower of Kerrville". I bet your neighbors are looking out their window "Dear God! His tomatoes are already 8 feet high!" lol Never mind about a ladder, just buy a pogo stick. It will be a fun challenge picking the tomatoes.

One quick thing, Early Girl's are indeterminate and can get kinda wild. I think you did the right thing by pruning them a bit.

Well shucks..........I don't know why I thought early girl was determinate. Im not much of a tomato konysewer. I just grow them cause "they" say you are supposed to if you are a gardener. So now I got an 8 foot tall tomato plant and I think it grew another 3 inches today. Pogo stick huh? That might work! I could just reach out and grab the tomato's as I bounced by.

HA! Not a tomato "konysewer" either. Now if we are talking whiskey.... :)

I've grown quite a few Early Girls in the past. Not my favorite but still much better than store bought. If you are looking for an early determinate variety, I have "Early Wonder" seeds I could send you. Probably too late to start in your region, huh? You could always give them a try next year. They are probably my favorite early variety.

Well, here I am putting an extension on top of the other two extensions. The next time I climb up there I am going to take a limb lopper and whack the top out of those mater plants.

I live in a country sub-division and no close by neighbors to see these things sticking up there. But I am thinking that next year, I will plant some tomato's and sunflowers in the top of some stackers located inside my security fence on the road side of my property. Passers by can see my sunflower pretty good from the road now but not the tomato's.

Hey Ray........I was at Wally World this morning and went by the "Bonnie" vegetable plants and there were some tomato plants labeled "Bush Early Girl" and they were listed as Determinate. What is with that? I think that is where I got the idea that Early Girls were determinate..........but I didn't buy my plants from Wally World........I grabbed them at another nursery and I think I got regular indeterminate early girls. Seems like every year there is someone out there trying to trick me up.........and succedding. "-(

LOL, yup it's a pain in the butt to keep track which is det. or indet. with all the similar names.

Instead of whacking the top off of them, I wonder if you could slowly train them back down, forming a "0" at the top. Probably would take some time/patience and a lot of string.

Good idea.........I think maybe I could get it to start leaning over toward the fence and then down to the fence and then going in both directions on the fence. :-) Gotta get this critter roped and tied down somehow.

Ya, try training it onto the fence..... that would be a perfect place for it to run. The only problem I can see in doing that would be the birds hanging out on the fence. Might make it easier for them to peck at the maters.

Jaywhacker, I see you took my hat. :)

Speaking of determinants, last year I had a couple of those Wally World Patio toms, so this year I figured that most determinates were the same thing. Well, the Koralik and Pearson Improved "determinants" are not acting right at all. They're monsters. I didn't cage or stake them. Now they're all over the place. Learn something new all the time.

Bad weather last night. Strong winds laid my tomato pole over on its side. That pole was mounted in a 10 gallon nursery pot and the pot's bottom does not have enough surface area to provide a good foundation. So I will just rope the thing to the fence. Not much damage done to the tomato's.

I figured the 6 ft tall sunflower in the top of another stack would be the first thing to succumb to a Texas wind but it is still standing tall. And it is not staked or tied off at all.

I came back in the house for some pie and coffee and another gust of wind blowed my mater pole over again. This time I took a picture.

You can see 3 more early girl plants in some big nursery containers along the fence. They are untrimmed and unstaked, they way tomato's shoud be grown, and are starting to pump out tomato's.

This message was edited Jun 3, 2009 3:40 PM

The last blow over knocked off 6 tomato's. Oh the trials and tribulations of us stacked pot konysewers!

I got that sucker roped to the fence now. Let the wind blow.