Can You Use a Big Boy Tomato Plant for the Topsy Turvy Hanger?

Description

The Big Boy tomato hybrid, invented by Dr. Oved Shifriss and introduced by Burpee Inc. in 1949, changed the game for tomato growers. Tomatoes before the Big Boy were difficult, over-sized, persnickety plants to grow. The Big Boy, however, produced perfect large red fruit with much less effort than any variety before it. It's genetic heritage still remains a trade secret, even after Dr. Shifriss' death in 2004. Ripe Big Boy tomatoes can weigh 10 ounces to a pound or more. The vines are indeterminate and produce tomatoes all summer long. Big Boys have the added advantage of being disease-resistant, compact and bush-like instead of the sprawling vines of most indeterminates. They produce an abundance of large, fragrant fruits.

Indeterminate tomatoes produce flowers along the sides of the vines allowing each individual stem to produce multiple fruits and to continue to produce them throughout the growing season. Unlike bush or determinate varieties, Big Boys don't produce all their fruit at once, which means less weight on the vines at one time. This is an advantage for a tomato being grown upside down.

Vines tend upward toward the sun and the sudden weight of too much fruit can break the vines. Indeterminate vines are more flexible than determinates and the more gradual weight of increasing, but graduated fruit loads allow the vines to be pulled back down more gently. Thus, Big Boys, unlike many other large-sized tomato hybrids like Bush Beefsteaks, do rather better in upside-down planters.

Trim suckers off the seedlings, leaving only two main vines to grow to maturity. Normally, Big Boys are short and more bush-like, but by reducing the number of vines supported by the root system, The plant will put all its energy into those two vines, allowing you to spread the weight over a wider area. As they grow, tie the vines to a trellis or nearby fence and train them to spread out. This and the fact that the vines don't produce all their tomatoes at once, makes Big Boys a good choice if you simply must grow larger tomatoes in hanging planters.