I bought some tomato plants recently but found out one of them is the tumbling variety. Meaning the tomatoes will cascade over the pot, I did not know this at the time of buying them. So I went ahead and put them in a cage. After reading up I realized I need to raise them or put them in some kind of hanging pot. Having some old trees I cut down at about six feet, I suspended a concrete pot I made awhile back. See below for the posts on that project.
@solominer/making-concete-pots-for-plants
I may go back to making more of them, though this time I will try to use mortar instead of concrete.
Notching out the dead tree gives the paracord a spot to hold onto, otherwise I would have to wrap it around the trunk several times.
A simple knot was used to tie the cord from one tree to the other, about seven feet apart. I made it as tight as possible to minimize sagging.
With the cord tied and in the notches I was ready to build my hanging basket. Using paracord it should be more than enough to handle whatever happens.
Getting my spool of paracord, my cutters and my concrete pot. I size it up before cutting all of my strands.
I cut eight strands, which I will then double up as build the rope harness for the pot.
Tying them all together at the end I make the bottom of the harness.
I then tie two cords together four times. And repeat again until I only have two sets to hang the pot with.
First I tried placing the pot in the middle, but it was hanging down alot so I placed it over to the side where more tension could hold it up higher.
Using some wire to attach the loops to the horizontal paracord it seems strong enough. We shall see if it breaks over time. I think the steel wire would break before this paracord as it can support over five hundred pounds. In other words I could add another four or so of these pots and still be under the cords capacity.
With the dirt in the pot I get ready to transplant the "tumbling tom" variety. It should be more happy in a hanging pot from what I have seen.
Still a little shocked from the planting last week I will be very careful handling it and digging it up.
Seems its not all that shocked, its producing flowers just a week into planting it.
The transplant went well and its now in the concrete pot. Will keep an eye on it and make sure it stays watered and the suspension system holds up.
Now this plant is about three feet off the ground. So when the flowers do produce, it should have tomatoes overflowing the concrete pot and hanging down. Hopefully the bugs will stay off, as a caterpillar would need to tight rope walk its way the pots now.
In the place of the tumbling tom variety I planted a grape variety, should do better in a tomato cage from the looks of them online. So now I should have three plants. One early girl, one yellow tumbling tom and a grape variety.
With the grape variety in the ground I wrap up. Hoping when they do put on a bunch of new growth I can take a cutting and start another plant. Hopefully I can do this early enough in the year for the clone to produce its own tomatoes. Last year I started in the summer and never got my clones to produce any tomatoes. So maybe this year starting shortly after the frost is over I can now get a clone to fruit in the same year as it being cut.