Upside Down Tomato Planters

As I mentioned in my bean skillet post, I tend to be a bit enthusiastic about tomatoes. When I started picking up seedlings, I ended up with EIGHT types of tomato, as well as a tomatillo plant. I ran out planting space pretty quickly and started belly-aching about it on Facebook. A very brilliant friend, SquareDonut, was kind enough to send me a link she found on homemade upside down planters. After checking out how a few others made their planters, I set off to the hardware store to grab what I needed. I struck out. I was at Target grabbing some other things when I ran across this beauty in the kid's beach toys section: a 2 gallon sand bucket. 

 Nerd that I am, I was really excited about scoring 4 planters for under $10. I dug out an old roll of landscaping paper and commenced work.

The drill bit pictured there was something I'd not used before, so GI Joe was kind enough to drill the first one for me and show me the finer points.  The results were as tidy as the planters with the punch out drain holes I'd originally searched for:

 You could use coffee filters, but since I had no coffee filters and landscape fabric, I used the fabric. It holds the soil and the plants in, but allows the excess water to drain out. I cut a few squares and put holes in the center of each.

I very carefully shook the tomato seedling loose from the soil and planters (reserving soil to go in the pot) and feed the seedling, root up, into the hole. I then added some soil to help secure them, and then hung the whole pot on an awaiting hook.  In addition to the extra seedlings, I had some lovely trailing flowering plants. Instead of trying to find another spot for the plants, I figured they'd be helpful in attracting pollinators. I coordinated color of the tomato to color of the flowers on the plant and finished out adding soil and the flowers to the pots. Plants were watered in and hung on their hooks.

Not too shabby if I might say so myself.