James Bryan is a man that had a genius idea that resulted in something brilliant. Gardeners and repurposing fanatics behold, keyhole garden, meets tomato cage, meets drip irrigation. The setup is functional, highly effective yet obviously simple. Especially if you salvage the fencing, you can whip one of these up for next to nothing.
Bryan said that he started, planting 4 tomatoes around a garbage can with holes drilled in the bottom rim and a second row up about 10 inches, in May 28th… buried the can to where the top holes were around an inch above the ground… put in 2 shovels full of compost… then he watered the can every 2 days without pouring water on the leaves… these 4 plants became 5 ft 4 inches in less than a month and a half and packed with green tomatoes and more than a hundred sets of tomato blossoms…
May 28th
End of June, 3 ft cage
“July 9th after a week of very little rain and record high temps …the plants were full with blooms and tomatoes inside the cage!” – James Bryan via Hometalk
In order to grow the tomato plants above, Bryan used a 13 gallon kitchen garbage can but later switched to using 5 gallon buckets because they’re a lot cheaper and easier to find in quantities.
If you water each plant with 5 gallons of water per week, you could even use a larger can. For example if you use a 5 gallon bucket to plant 2 tomato plants around it you fill the 5 gallon bucket 2 times a week. Or a 13 gallon can be filled twice yields 26 gallons, so you could plant up to 5 plants around it.
Bryan also said that he now has a higher yield per plant than most other growers, and grows tomatoes for the market.
Source : makeyourlifehealthier.com
