Norfolk man tries growing crop upside-down.

ALTHOUGH Jerome Yavner has been cultivating tomatoes in the normal right side up way for 40 years, he isn't so steeped in tradition that he won't try something new.

So this summer Yavner is growing some of his tomatoes upside down, according to a new technique espoused by Gardener's Supply Co., a Vermont catalog business.

Two crops of tomatoes are growing in Yavner's yard off Little Creek Road in Norfolk. Several are growing the old-fashioned way, upright in the ground in raised beds, but two are planted upside down in baskets that hang from a trellis.

Mostly Better Boys, all the plants, no matter which direction they are growing, look equally healthy and have choice-looking tomatoes ripening red on the vines.

Yavner decided to experiment with this new way of growing tomatoes after his daughter gave him two upside-down tomato planters for his birthday from the catalog company, www.gardeners.com.

It touts its new tomato planters as a "revolutionary way to grow tomatoes." Because tomatoes grow in their own containers and hang down, there's no need for staking or weeding. In addition, because they are not in the ground, some diseases and pests are eliminated.

The basket is a steel frame with a poly liner. The bottom two-thirds of the liner is filled with a lightweight mix of sphagnum peat, perlite, vermiculite and limestone.

The top is a one-gallon self-watering container with capillary matting that allows water to seep into the plant gradually.

"They use a gallon of water per day," Yavner said.

Yavner built a framework of PVC pipe to hang his upside-down tomato planters. He rigged a pulley system to help raise and lower the baskets as necessary. At this point each basket weighs 75 to 80 pounds, he said.

"You have to raise them as the plants grow," he explained.

His plants in the ground are fed eggshells, peanuts shells and banana skins tossed right onto the ground and worked into the soil, along with a few shots of Miracle-Gro and 10-10-10 fertilizer. But the upside-down plants are fed only with a self-watering container mix of 5-6-5 fertilizer that is sold by Gardener's Supply.

Yavner has found that the soil-less medium and constant watering grows stronger plants than the plants that grow right side up in the ground.

"The stems are huge and heavy coming out of the bottom," he explained. "They try to grow vertically at first and then the tomatoes bring them down."

On the other hand, both the upright and upside- down Better Boys are ripening at the same time and growing at the same rate, though the upright ones are taller. Then again, Yavner thinks the upside-down tomatoes taste better.

"The hanging ones have more meat, and I think they are sweeter," he said, "but that may be my imagination, because I want them to be."

There are some pests that hanging baskets can't stop and that's birds and rabbits. But that's all right with Yavner. For one, the birds take care of insect pests on his tomatoes and two, he grows enough for everybody.

Yavner said that if he gets around to building a bigger frame to hold more tomato baskets, he might buy more next year. Even though he likes the new way of growing tomatoes, he thinks ordinary upright tomatoes will win out in the end.

"The novelty is going to wear off, I think," he said.

Mary Reid Barrow, barrow1@cox.net