Hangin' Maters

Right before I moved to Oregon I was introduced to the magic of hanging tomato plants. I was at a nursery and they had a giant cherry tomato plant hanging upside down absolutely laden with juicy little red orbs. Salivate away. I looked at the setup and it seemed simple enough. Plant a tomato in an upside down bucket with a hole in the base, wait till it gets pretty big, then hang the bucket so the mater is upside down. I don't know if this is my theory or it is something I was told, but I think that hanging it upside down frees the gardner from having to support the mater plant as well as allowing the mater to not try to support itself, therefore freeing up energy for juiciness production.

Well, we have an awning on the south side of our porch. I figured it would be beautiful in summer on our side porch with a row of hangin maters blocking the 

sun. Like a plant cave or something.

So I started the maters from seed in the greenhouse real early. Transplanted some starts into old buckets, and let them grow rightside up for a good while. I put bolts into our awning supports midway up instead of all the way toward the front because I was afraid that the plants would put too much torque on the supports that far out. This is what it looked like.

It was pretty awesome if you ask me. But alas, the Summer sun in Oregon is farther to the north than I expected and the awning provided constant shade, not the best thing for maters I'm sure. The maters started stretching toward the sun getting all bent and I was convinced that upon fruiting, the stems would be broken from the weight of my 9 delicious heirlooms varieties.

Failure.

So I took them down and put em in the garden proper, but this kinda took up ALL the garden space. I tried planting stuff between the plants, but the maters got too big and crowded the others out. We have had TONS of tomatoes this summer. Yummy.

A raised bed garden to match the greenhouse

After the greenhouse was "finished" (it still aint finished, really), I wanted to build a raised bed garden. So I did. First I used the old wood from the rotting tool shed that I destroyed for the greenhouse space to make the frame. Then I spent a weekend hauling truckloads of rocks and soil from Lane Forest Products to the JS. The rocks are for soil drainage, I guess.

Then we planted a bunch of starts. Those starts got eaten by an opossum! So the first winter crop didn't do so hot. Most things bolted or didn't grow until Spring. 

Eventually the wood started to bow out too much and consensus was, "The garden, while neat, is hella ugly."

So Erich and I bought 2x12 planks and dug some 4x4 posts to make it look pretty. I think we probably should have put some water based sealer on the wood. But it should last pretty long without it anyway.

Well, the garden is still doing pretty well after one year of use. This summer we mostly grew tomatoes, but that is another post.

The story of the greenhouse

So when I moved into the JS, we were just getting new vinyl windows. We got to keep all the old wooden framed windows and Sequoia suggested we could make them into a cold-frame. Inspiration struck and stuck. So I found a bunch of wood in the woodshed, bought some more wood, some framing pieces, and some screws.

I screwed up in the very beginning by using old 4x4's that had a twist in them as they went up. Seeing as they were the base for my structure, all subsequent pieces did not fit as had been calculated. I even worked out angles for several of the joints. But oh well, I made everything fit.

The windows were single pane, so I took matching windows and screwed them together and I think I even sealed the joint, but I can't remember at the moment. In any case, I got something that resembled a double pane window, though I doubt they are all that effective if the airspace between is not sealed.

I should look into that, huh?

Well, in the end I got a pretty cool greenhouse I think, especially considering I had hardly operated a circular saw before this undertaking. It could have turned out worse, and I still need to fit the door on there better. But shit, it sure did work this year for our towering tomato plants!

Though, the upside down tomato forest is another story altogether.

This one time, I built a greenhouse/cold-frame out of windows