A Guide to Attracting and Feeding Hummingbirds

If you’re anything like me, you’re always looking for new and innovative ways to attract hummingbirds. Even after having established multiple successful hummingbird feeding solutions in my garden, the next best thing around the corner never fails to attract my attention. Sometimes I’m actively hunting for novel hummingbird feeders, sometimes I stumble across them completely by accident.

Earlier this week I made a trip to my local Bed Bath and Beyond in search of an odor fighting spray I’d been reading about. You can read the resulting review on Zero Odor I put up on hubpages.com. It was while browsing through the store in search of Zero Odor that I happened to stumble across the TOPSY TURVY - HUMMINGBIRD HANGOUT PLANTER. My wife noticed it, actually, and she pointed out that it’s been a while since I updated this blog with any new content.

The $11.99 price tag seemed right so we went ahead and picked the product up intent on trying it out and writing some reviews as we get closer to hummingbird season in my neck of the woods. It’s a bit early, still, so take this preliminary review with a grain of salt and check back in a month or two for updates, but what follows will at least help manage your expectations a bit.

Early Impressions of the Topsy Turvy – Hummingbird Hangout Planter

Now I won’t lie – my first reaction was disappointment. You see this thing in the box in the store and just assume it contains everything you need (minus the soil) to get your planter started off right. Your assumption would be wrong. What you get is the Topsy Turvy planter and nothing more. There are no seeds, no miracle fertilizer or plant food, nada.

To be fair, the packaging doesn’t claim to include any of those things but neither does the picture of a planter in full bloom with hummingbird-friendly flowers imply otherwise. And, of course, the lack of any seeds or some kind of super-fantastic fertilizer begs the question – why buy this instead of just picking up an already potted, in-bloom, hummingbird-friendly plant in a planter from your local nursery for nearly the same price?

Well, folks, we’ll have to wait and see. The claim to fame the Topsy Turvy products market on is that the planters are uniquely friendly to growth. The quote from their advertising is as follows;

“Topsy Turvy® technology to make flowers grow like crazy! The Topsy Turvy® secret is in the vertical grow bag. As the sun heats the planter, water and nutrients constantly feed the roots, so they stay warm and moist on the inside, while the flowers grow healthier, fuller and faster on the outside. It’s like each plant has its own incubation eco-system!” 

Is it true? I’ll let you know soon. I’ll probably be planting and hanging my Topsy Turvy Hummingbird Hangout Planter next month and it will be living next to a regular ol’ pot containing the same types of flowers to see how it performs.

In the meantime, feel free to head over to hubpages to read my Zero Odor Spray review. That, at least, is one miraculous product that exceeded my expectations right away.