I first wrote about the deck tomatoes in mid-June. It’s been 2.5 months since then, so here’s an update.

July 3rd – Two weeks of growing, the sub-irrigation tomatoes are looking good.

July 7th – First flower buds appear on the sub-irrigation planters.

July 9th – About to head to California for a week of work, deployed these capillary house plant feeders to keep the upside-down tomatoes watered.

July 29th – First sign of tomatoes growing on the sub-irrigated tomatoes.

August 8th – The upside-down tomatoes finally show flower buds, a whole month later. This is due to the reduction of sun and lack of consistent watering with the upside-down planter design.

August 8th – Here’s the state of the upside-down tomato plant. You can see how the design of the planter actually shades the plant too much until it gets to a certain size.

August 13th – The upside-down planter flower finally open.

August 16th – In the meantime, the sub-irrigated planters are doing pretty well. That first tomato from July 29th is now the size of my thumb.

You can see how much taller the plants are compared to 6 weeks ago. I had to start tying the plants to the supports, and then run stay lines like the rigging of masts on a sailing ship to keep everything from falling over.

August 20 to 23 – More and more tomatoes appear on the sub-irrigated tomatoes. There are at least 15 or 16 of them, all growing. I now need to water the tomatoes every day…they are very thirsty.

The current size of the tomatoes. I wonder when they’ll start changing color?

I’ve been wanting to grow tomatoes on my deck for a few years. After considering hanging upside-down tomato planters last year—nixed because I couldn’t hang anything without nailing into the siding, which was against condominium regulations—I’ve gone ahead an purchased a Suncast standing tomato planter from Amazon.

It’s basically a raised platform on four legs that allows you to plant your upside-down tomato plant without hanging it from something. It cost me about $45.

Next, I purchased a bag of potting soil and six “Big Boy” tomato seedlings, which I have come to learn are probably not the best for a hanging tomato planter. What I want is something called a “determinate” tomato plant, which stops growing in length. These are also called “bush tomatoes”. They tend to be early tomatoes; a species called “Early Girl” is apparently a good bet. The Big Boy is apparently an “indeterminate” type of tomato, meaning it’s going to grow and grow. Uh oh.

Tomatoes apparently need a lot of sunlight and water. Sunlight I’m not too worried about, but the water is going to be a problem. I can run a garden hose from the first floor up to my deck, so daily watering shouldn’t be a problem (especially since I’ve rigged a harness to keep the hose off the ground and out of the way, so I can leave it connected). However, when I am travelling for business I’m going to need an automated watering solution. Preferably one that is not expensive.

I first looked at irrigation systems that required pumps. There are indoor house plant watering machines, such as this Claber automatic watering system, but they are a bit expensive and I wanted something that didn’t require electricity to operate. Plus, the system needs to exist outside on my deck, not inside the house. I looked to see if I could find parts to build a gravity-driven drip irrigation system at DripDepot, which has affordable kits, but it seemed a little more complicated than what I was looking for right now.

Then I remembered that there irrigation systems that use capillary action, and found these Austrian self-watering probes. I’ve placed an order for the five-pack, and I’ll see if all 5 of them can keep a tomato plant thriving.

I also made two sub-irrigated planters (aka self-watering planters), which have the water supply underneath a suspended soil bed in a closed container.

The water is wicked upward into the soil through capillary action, and is very water efficient. The DIY approach I’m taking has cost me about 25 dollars in parts: a big plastic tub, some supporting pots, and some PVC piping. Buying an actual Earthbox from their website isn’t that much more; I may buy one just to see what it’s like.