Home Building Tools: Felknor Ventures TT041112 Topsy Turvy Strawberry Planter Reviews

Felknor Ventures TT041112 Topsy Turvy Strawberry Planter

Felknor Ventures TT041112 Topsy Turvy Strawberry Planter "aussie grills parts"

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Felknor Ventures TT041112 Topsy Turvy Strawberry Planter Review

Felknor Ventures TT041112 Topsy Turvy Strawberry Planter Feature

Grow delicious, juicy strawberries all season long in just 3 simple steps

Upside-down planter forces water and nutrients to flow directly down from root to fruit

No pesticides, digging, weekend, or backbreaking work required

Grow parsley, basil, oregano, rosemary, mint, and other tasty herbs too

Simple to set up and maintain

aussie grills parts : Felknor Ventures TT041112 Topsy Turvy Strawberry Planter Check Product Rating

Felknor Ventures TT041112 Topsy Turvy Strawberry Planter Overviews

The Topsy Turvy Strawberry Planter is the most brilliant new invention ever for growing fresh strawberries. Because the ingenious Topsy Turvy is upside down, gravity naturally causes the water and nutrients to pour directly and freely down from the root to the fruit and each port hold 2 plants for even bigger yield! Simply place any strawberry or herb plant in the Topsy Turvy, add favorite potting soil, hang it up and then water. Sun warms the plant like a greenhouse, the root system explodes and thrives inside the planter. Plus, hanging in the air eliminates any ground fungus, harmful bacteria, cutworm damage - no need for pesticides, digging, weeding and makes berry picking easy. Can also grow herbs like parsley, oregano, basil, rosemary, mint and more.
aussie grills parts : Felknor Ventures TT041112 Topsy Turvy Strawberry Planter >Compare Prices<

Felknor Ventures TT041112 Topsy Turvy Strawberry Planter Reviews

When I purchased this product I was excited. Using the enclosed instructions I got started. I used a Honeyoe variety, after 10 day the plants started to rot, I planted 12, and I had to discard 3. Luckily I was watching closely, otherwise it would of been a matter of days before I lost all the plants! They say to use 5-6 cups of sand, that was way off. They dont give any instruction on how to properly plant, (roots need to be vertical, NOT horizontal. There was no explaination about the crowns needing to be planted just right. The claim to fame was that "you cannot over water your topsy turvy", and the "specialy designed" drainage system is a joke, there are eraser sized holes that are not placed efficently! Also the bag becomes so heavy that no shepard hook would hold it without becoming top heavy, so if you are a renter this is probably not for you, I dont think any landlord would appreciate you drilling into their property! Oh yeah and they say nothing about strawberry and tomato compatibliy, when the tomato topsy turvy is their signature product. The product itself is not a bad concept, I bought it! The problem is the lack of instruction! No seasoned strawberry grower is going to buy this product, so they must know it's mostly beginers using it. I thought it was doing great, the plants looked good, they had runners, flower, and little strawberries poping. I watered as instructed after planting and lost about 2 inches worth of soil from compacting, causing the plants to pull into the bag, I thought it was normal since there was no special instruction on how to put them in. I continued to water daily (not when there was rain). This is where the problem began. After 5 days I started to see wilting and brown leafs. On day 8 when leaving for work I notice a sickly looking plant, and when I returned it looked dead, there was a pretty drastic change from 8 hours earlier, so I reasearched the problem, I initialy found that tomatoes can cause strawberry plants to become infected with vericillium wilt, mine turvy was hanging next to the tomato bed, which I imediate moved. It caused black root rot to begin in my plants. Each day after more plants were showing signs of stress, so I went back to research more. This is what you need to know that they don't tell you. Never plant strawberries and tomatos near each other, (there are many more plants as well)! Tomatoes will increase the chace of infecting your plants with the 'vericillium wilt' disease, which kills the vascular system of the plant, , and there is not a fix for that, you can only prevent the disease. Definatley add holes to the drainage base inside the product, and to the bag as well because you CAN overwater! You do need to "make" a soil, instead of the 5-6 cups sand they suggest, uses about half a 5 gallon bucket, I also mixed in and compost soil builder that contains about 3% wood chipings, and of course, a quailty potting soil. When planting build a slope of compacted soil up over the hole so that when the plant settles in it will be adjacent to the hole and not below (plants will be pointing at 45 degree angle downward before 1st watering). Rinse roots gently with water to expose them, this will help the roots to set and not rot. Also I found it easiest to insert from the inside going out, the foliage can take some trama, but the roots need to be handled gently, and the sunburst openings are sharp and make a closed hole! Once inserted make a hole in soil for roots to fall into and be sure that your plant is securely in place, you do not want places for the soil to condense to once watered, making them sink in. Be sure that your crown is not covered by soil, as this will cause disease and kill your plant! Add and secure one plant at a time to be sure crown is where it is suppose to be. Have sunburst openings out as well, so if you realize after watering that you didnt plant the crown deep enough, you can add a bit of soil and push in the sunbursts, thus hiding the exposed area. The same goes if you planted them too deep, you can remove a bit of the soil around the crown with your finger and push the sunbursts in to expose more of the crown! Of course water after planting, to get the plants confy in there new home and gauge what adjustments need to be made. Here is the key do NOT overwater, as the claim cannot be done. If you do not live in extreme dry heat, watering every day will kill your plants. If it's forcasted for rain more than one day cover hole on top of planter! Do not water the day after rain! Check soil on bottom before watering, because that is where it will pool, due to the faulty drainage holes. The top may feel dry, but the bottom will be soaked. You may want to put a thin layer of sand at the bottom as well so when the dirt drains it will mix with the sand instead of becoming thick wet mud. If you do not create the proper soil mixture your results will be mud! You will be drowning your yummy strawberries! I also recomend taking the top cover off periodicaly to expose top of soil to sunlight. Always gauge your watering on weather conditions, everyone should not follow the everyday watering instructions, just as well, you may need to, but ALWAYS check soil condition first. If your plants have flowers or strawberries when you buy them, not just the runners they mention, after planting remove them so the plant can foucs on nourishing the roots, and not the fruit. They mention fertilizer as optional, for full sized berries you WILL need to fertilize, whether it be organic or not, and not when first planting (follow specific instructions to your fertilizer of choice). A couple of other tips, pine needles added on top layer of soil will naturaly add nitrogen to soil as they decompose, an organic to chemical fertilizers, you can also use bone meal and blood meal to fertilize organicly. Borage, an herb, is the Strawberry's best friend. It attracts bee's which are vital to pollination, as well as predatory insects to take care of pests. All of this was learned from researching strawberry planting, and the failure of the 1,2,3 now you have strawberry directions, which caused my plants to die. If you had failure as well first time round and have not lost your excitement for homegrown berries, I just replanted, and hope all the work pays off. These instructions will provide you with PROPER conditions to be successful. If you do decide to replant because of black root rot, vericillium wilt or another problem be sure to DISPOSE of soil previously used, and rinse plant roots thourghly to remove the problem. Also check all roots, to be sure they have not become infected because they will cotinue to decay and eventually contaminate the new soil if replanted.You can also use www.strawberryplants.org as your personal guide to yummy strawberries! Good Luck!

I'm a beginner gardener so I'm still learning. I bought 12 starter plants from my local garden store and a whole lot of soil. Pulling the plants through the openings were pretty difficult and the points were sharp, I had to make sure that I didn't rip the plant. I didn't use all the openings only because I wanted to see how the plants would take. I already had a pretty sturdy metal plant hanger for it to hang off of, which I was grateful for because the container does get pretty heavy once the plants, soil, plus water are all added. One major thing I noticed was a couple days after I planted the strawberry plants the soil became compacted and pulled the plants down with it. They then became slanted through the openings. So make sure the soil is compacted enough before you start planting. I don't know how long it'll take before they starting fruiting, but it's only been about 2 weeks since I've planted them and nothing so far (not a big deal, I wasn't expecting them to grow that fast anyway). Once it stops raining I will have to get it down from the hanger and fix the soil so they're not all slanted. I might even snip off the points of the openings because they're so sharp and seem to be squeezing the plants.

This is a great item. I bought starter plants from the local garden center and inserted them into the planter with some organic soil. The only mistake that I made was that I used garden soil, and you really need to use potting soil for this planter. I have it hanging on my porch and it looks absolutely beautiful. I planted my strawberries a couple weeks ago and they are doing well so far. I do not have any strawberries yet but I expect this plant to do well. I have been told that it is impossible to plant strawberries in the ground in my area because the strawberries get eaten up by bugs. I have not had any bug problems with this planter so far. One minor drawl back is that it is easy to damage the roots when inserting the plants into the planter. I think this problem could be improved with a better design.

Where do I start... For starters it is very difficult to place plants inside the little holes without breaking stems and leaves due to very sharp edges on the openings. Strawberries need to be planted in loose acidic soil, however, after watering, gravity compacts the plants down to the point that the top two rows (10 plants) pull themselves into the planter and hide the crown. This inhibits any new growth since the crown is no longer exposed. Since the holes are sharp and are in a closed position, you need to be vigilant checking for new growth and sometimes have to pull it out from the holes. I had numerous incidences of new leaves growing up into the planter that had to be pulled back out.Since the planter compacts the soil, drainage becomes VERY POOR, leading to improper use of iron for strawberry plants and chlorosis, nothing that an iron supplement can't fix. The instructions say to water almost every day, I have not watered mine in 4 days and the soil is still moist, 6 of the 15 plants have now rotted off, even though I never watered daily. Even in the 90 degree heat that we have been having I still have moist soil with very infrequent waterings. I don't know how they can claim you can't overwater, but clearly these plants are overwatered.The only strawberry plants that are doing well are two new ones that I had runners go into new REGULAR pots, those plants look fabulous. All of the strawberries that I have obtained from this plant (and there have not been many) are about the size of a pea, and I used the really good Quinault variety that is supposed to be disease resistant too and 2" diameter fruits.I have been container gardening for years, my tomatoes, peppers, basil, green onion and parsley look fantastic (all in normal pots), my topsy turvy looks like it needs to be taken out back and shot.

First, what's in the box. You get the planter itself (which includes a three-wire hanging system with a swiveling hook attachment at the junction), a plastic cap that covers the top of the planter, a small sheet of instructions, and a reasonably heavy duty screw-in hook that you're to screw into the awning of your house. And....that's it. To this, you need to add potting soil, fertilizer and plants.The advertising and general presentation of this item makes it seem so simple: Fill it with potting soil, add plants, hang, water, wait for berries to appear and enjoy. Like countless others I fell for that. I bought this item as a treat for my three year old daughter, so she could gain the experience of watching plants grow and strawberries appear.I followed the instructions verbatim, using Miracle Grow potting soil and plant food, measured to the correct proportions. I bought 30 strawberry plants from a local greenhouse. I inserted two plants per hole, filling it up with soil as I went. When it was complete I covered it and hung it from the included hook just outside my back door. I watered it every day, just as the instructions said.And then I ran into problems.The first thing I noticed is that the lower plants started to wilt. My mother, who knows far more about gardening than I do, decreed that there wasn't enough water getting down to them. I recalled that when I added water to the planter it tended to overfill very quickly. So I took the planter down and very carefully hollowed out a space in the middle of the planter going all the way down. I inserted a cardboard paper tower tube (into which I had poked a number of holes), hung it back up, and then watered it. This time the water went all the way to the bottom, going through the holes in the tube (and the tube itself) to water all the plants. Problem solved, or so I thought.Over the next few weeks I watched all of the bottom row plants and most of the middle row plants wither and die. The topmost plants flourished. To date, I don't understand why. My only guess - and this is PURELY a guess - is that I was a little too rough on the root systems for the lower plants (which were inserted first) and, as I got used to the process, got progressively more gentle, which saved the upper plants.I watched the remaining plants grow and flower and small berries began to appear. Success! Then I discovered/realized the second problem that the instructions don't warn you about. Although strawberries are very tasty to us humans, there are a LARGE number of wild creatures who will happily gorge themselves on them as well. For weeks I watched numerous small berries appear, and then just begin to ripen, and then the next day saw huge chunks - or entire berries - disappear from the plant.That's when I had enough. I had the planter for two months and hadn't gotten a single berry from it. I moved the planter into my house, hung it on a hook in our sun room, and every few days checked for new flowers. I pollinated using a small watercolor brush from my daughter's paint set. Eventually new berries began to appear and ripen and we were able to enjoy them. They are, in fact, quite tasty.So there you have it. This is NOT a "set it and forget it" deal. It requires some time and effort in order to achieve results. For today's fast food-oriented society this could be a deal breaker, but I leave it up to you to decide.Two other things..... First, after about a month I discovered, by lifting the plastic top off the planter, that new plants had started growing inside the planter (rather than through the holes in the side). I was able to redirect these new plants through the side openings but be aware that this may happen. Second - and this IS mentioned in the manual, but IMO not strenuously enough - the filled and watered planter is HEAVY, easily 20 lbs, so it's wise to make sure you screw the hook into a place that can support that kind of weight.One nice touch: The hook assembly has a swivel in it which makes it very easy to rotate the planter on the hook, so as to best take advantage of available light. It's a good idea to rotate the planter every day or two so as to allow all plants an equal opportunity to get some light.I would have very much liked to have gotten a little more information in the instruction manual. For those who have a "green thumb" what I describe above is probably obvious, and in retrospect it's obvious to me too - NOW. A couple of months ago, not so much. Given that this is targeted towards people without a lot of gardening experience some additional information, tips, instructions, etc would have been very helpful. For lacking that information I take away one star.

Bought that June 2nd offline together with the plants and some potter soil that already has fertilizer in it. Be careful that thing is - once full with soil and water - really heavy! The strawberries really need a lot of light to get going. And you need to water in chunks until it starts dripping out through the holes on the bottom (!) - and not on the sides. If you do it carefully that seems to work well. Takes around 10 minutes for me when I add it in smaller sips until it has gone through and starts running out of it.The plants so far (this is now 4 weeks) have gone nuts in growing but we had little strawberries so far. A few flowers wilted early on as that watering is really important and you can't forget about it a single day!The greenish plastic things covering the openings seem to tear very easily so I doubt that will last more than a year and replanting should be impossible.It is a bit annoying that the water tends to come out on the sides quite easily instead of going through until the bottom. So make sure you water in sips and in the middle. As that might explain why some people experience that strong wilting. Since I've done strawberry growing on the ground too I knew already how much water strawberries need and that they the leaves and fruits should preferentially not touch soil to avoid ants and such eating them. Which makes me believe the general idea is good but the design can be improved.But so far we like it. But you really need to get into the watering, maybe automatic watering would be a good idea.Update 2012: Just saw that review again. After not even a year outdoors the material started tearing (probably from UV exposure) and finally broke down completely. So that is definitely not a long term investment.Update august 2010: We had already many strawberries so far but I think I will buy another strawberry variety next year, they are quite small. The ones I bought were just "as is" Walmart ones and seem to be not too great, had no details to it. There seem to be varieties especially fitting for such hanging gardening. So pay attention to get good plants! Watering is still no problem, can't confirm the complaints about plants dying at the bottom. What I realized though: even though I consider our tap water quite good quality the plants get yellow leaves in some areas if I don't let the water sit in the jug for one day. Might be residual chlorine or something? So try to not water them directly from the tap.