Hydroponic Tomatoes

[Elagrow]

I am just recently starting in this hobby.

I work for a Hydroponics Company and decided I would like to learn more about them since I am now building them. So I picked up a small PC grow box (specs are in sig) it can only hold 2 small plants.

I decided to start out with Roma Tomatoes, realizing I may have to transplant them if I cant control the vertical growth.

I planted 2 seeds on Sep. 4th, Both germinated early on the 8th and grew to almost 1.5in. tall on the first day, today they are about 2.5 in. tall.

I used Moon Dust nutrients from the start, I am using 2 1in rockwool blocks, with Hydroton Clay red rocks surrounding the rockwool in the 3in. Netpots.

Being as I know very little about Hydroponics Growing (and just about all forums that work with hydroponics are related to Marijuana) I wanted to find out more about growing "legal" plants in them. (I dont grow, or use Marijuana myself).

What Lighting should I use at what stages?
How do I differentiate each stage of growth from another?
Does Bushmaster work with tomatoes (Bushmaster is a Kelp extract made to stop vertical growth and encourages thickness without sacrificing the number of pods)
Is Spray-n-Grow worth using?

This is the system I am using (not the exact one, but same exact setup)


Day 6


Day 6

[kurt]

http://www.tomatoville.com/showthrea...ght=hydroponic Some info found in the search block.

[Cole_Robbie]

HPS lights tend to make leggy seedlings. Taller is not exactly better. They are the best for fruiting, though.

Mylar does not work much better than flat white paint. It's not worth the effort.

You need a miniature tomato variety to grow in a setup that small. "Bitonto" is what I would recommend for you. It's a dwarf red cherry. I bought my seed from Territorial Seed Company:
http://www.territorialseed.com/product/11178/238

I think air pumps are very primitive. It's much better to use a water pump and circulate the water. Get a fountain pump and connect it with hose to a pvc manifold spraying the water downward. They call it "recirculating deep water culture," which is a fancy name for a simple idea. You could use a bigger root chamber as well.

I'm sorry to sound so negative, but it is really hard to produce hydro tomatoes that are worth a darn to eat. My soil-less peat & compost mix has produced much better tasting tomatoes, at least in my efforts anyway. Regardless, I'm always happy to see anyone play around with hydro. I'm hoping to have better luck with lettuce than I did with tomatoes, but I'm not through experimenting yet. Good luck with everything.

[Elagrow]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

HPS lights tend to make leggy seedlings. Taller is not exactly better. They are the best for fruiting, though.

Mylar does not work much better than flat white paint. It's not worth the effort.

You need a miniature tomato variety to grow in a setup that small. "Bitonto" is what I would recommend for you. It's a dwarf red cherry. I bought my seed from Territorial Seed Company:
http://www.territorialseed.com/product/11178/238

I think air pumps are very primitive. It's much better to use a water pump and circulate the water. Get a fountain pump and connect it with hose to a pvc manifold spraying the water downward. They call it "recirculating deep water culture," which is a fancy name for a simple idea. You could use a bigger root chamber as well.

I'm sorry to sound so negative, but it is really hard to produce hydro tomatoes that are worth a darn to eat. My soil-less peat & compost mix has produced much better tasting tomatoes, at least in my efforts anyway. Regardless, I'm always happy to see anyone play around with hydro. I'm hoping to have better luck with lettuce than I did with tomatoes, but I'm not through experimenting yet. Good luck with everything.

Thanks, I wouldnt really say it sounds negative, my inexperience can only get better with criticism.

If I transferred the tomatoes into a soil pot is there anything special I should take note of, or do?

Also, i like the fountain pump idea, it doesnt matter how big of a pump I use does it?
Also on the same note as the garden pump, I was also thinking about building a new system, using misters with a soil base, anyone have any suggestions on how to set something like this up?

[Cole_Robbie]

Soil and hydro don't mix well. It's hard to drain off the excess nutes after a watering without it being muddy and full of stuff that will clog your pump. There are a ton of media that will work, though. Just go to www.wormsway.com and look through what they have. You don't need a mister, the media wicks the water outward for you. In a flood and drain setup like that, you don't need a big pump at all. For recirculating deep water culture, bigger is better, up until you reach the pump size/reservoir volume ratio where it begins to heat your reservoir solution.

[Elagrow]

Originally Posted by Cole_Robbie

Soil and hydro don't mix well. It's hard to drain off the excess nutes after a watering without it being muddy and full of stuff that will clog your pump.

But can I go from Hydro to Soil? I can understand that being the case for going from soil to hydro.

[Cole_Robbie]

Sorry, I misunderstood. If you meant pulling the plant up and re-potting it in a growing media, then yes, especially at this stage that would be fine. Obviously, plant the rockwool cube with it. Bury them deep, almost to the leaves.

And fwiw, it is also possible to go from soil (soil-less pro-mix/vermiculite) to hydro. You just have to wash off the roots well before you stick the seedling in the hydro machine.

[MJACTIVIST]

Elagrow theres nothing special you need to know before transplanting. Its extremely easy to grow from hydro to soil, but the the opposite is much more tricky.
I've been using and growing hydro for years. Hit me up if you have any questions.
L8
MJ

[Sequim]

Elagrow, I'll toss my $0.02 worth in here regarding hydroponically-grown tomatoes; maybe you'll find some of it helpful. I'm now starting my fourth winter season, and I've found this hobby to be most gratifying. I grow hydroponic tomatoes and lettuce year round, and have had good success with hydroponic broccoli, summer squash, strawberries, eggplant, and bush beans during the summer season.

The method I've been using has the root mass constantly immersed in the nutrient solution which causes the plants and their fruit to remain very well hydrated. The high water content lowers the fruit brix levels so flavor levels are likely to be low. If you can dessicate the fruit a bit without harming the plant the quality will be improved. The extreme example would be to dry the ripe harvested fruit, as for sun-dried tomatoes, to produce colossal flavor amplification. The more water you remove, the more intense is the flavor that is left behind.

This is the case for most any fruit. For example peach growers who want high quality fruit will terminate water to the trees a couple weeks before the peaches begin to ripen. It makes a world of difference.

Hydration can be reduced in a system with immersed roots by running the solution EC (Electrical Conductivity) higher than normal. This limits the plant's water uptake and increases brix. For my producing tomatoes in warm bright weather a normal EC would be around 1,800 microsiemens per centimeter. I aim for around 2,500 which noticeably improves flavor. I've done this with good results by mixing the nutrients stronger while keeping the element proportions unchanged.

But mineral uptake is a complex reaction; actually a complex series of reactions. Abnormally high concentrations of the essential elements might cause some to be blocked, and there's a risk of precipitates forming. So I've tried sodium chloride to raise an otherwise normal EC to about 3,000, knowing that tomato plants tolerate this salt very well. I wilted some of the plants in the process of finding their tolerance threshold and backed off a bit, but I was able to demonstrate this as an effective method for flavor enhancement. I expect to eventually produce hydroponically-grown tomatoes with repeatable flavor quality that is better than soil-grown tomatoes.

For my upcoming winter crop (starting soon) I plan to modify my home made tomato growers to use intermittent drip cycles into a quick-draining media, such as hydroton, and scavenge the solution away from the root zone. This should provide a way to limit the plant's hydration with normal EC levels, and tweak the brix levels by controlling the drip duty cycle. For this I will try to keep the entire root mass within the hydroton media instead of using a 6" net cup with nearly all of the roots dangling out into the reservoir. The modified grower will use a 20-liter "root routing" pot nested into a standard 5-gallon bucket.

Hmm . . . 20 liters per plant; that's a lot of hydroton. Maybe I should re-think this.

My biggest problem with indoor growing under lights has been solution temperature rise, and this will probably plague you also. I have solved this by insulating the growers against the room heat and circulating the solution through an array of poly tubes on the floor of the unheated garage, next door to the growing lab. An adjustable bypass valve allows me to control how much solution goes through the exchanger and the temperature regulates nicely around 68 degrees F.

The problem with elevated solution temperature is that it offers a comfortable environment for dangerous pathogens. As a safety measure I add a daily dose of 35% hydrogen peroxide to the solution; 1 milliliter per 25 liters of solution volume.

I use high output T5 lighting exclusively, but learned the hard way that most T5 offerings are junk. I purchased many different T5 luminaires before finding one that delivers light as claimed. If your seedlings are getting adequate light they will be wider than they are tall. I've been experimenting with a home made high power water-cooled linear LED array, but that's another story I'll tell at another time.

I can't speak for other plants but my experience shows that tomatoes will bloom when they are hormonally ready to do so, regardless of the light color. I think this is influenced by the ratio of root mass to aerial mass; when the nutrient production resources exceed what is consumed for vegetative growth the plants simply start blooming. I've not been able to influence this by varying the light spectrum.

If you have any specific questions, please feel free to PM me. Meanwhile I've thumbnailed a few pictures below that might be of interest. All plants in the pictures never saw a photon of sunlight, except for the retired ones that got their first glimpse when dragged out of the lab.


Pete


Picture descriptions, left to right

IndoorTomatoLine.JPG
Here's a view of my winter tomato growing line. There are six taut cables overhead from which the lights and plant support strings hang. The wall is papered with reflective mylar and there are reflective draperies on the aisle side that can be drawn open for servicing the plants. This picture was taken after the plants were removed at season end.

Canopy.JPG
Young plants inside the growing area.

SweetCluster1.JPG
Young Sweet Cluster plants. Sweet Cluster is a saladette tomato, typically weighing around 4 ounces.

MiniCharm.JPG
Mini Charm is a very tasty grape tomato. It takes a long time to ripen so the clusters are often unpicked by the time their part of the stalk has been lowered to the floor.

DrapesClosed.JPG
View from the service aisle with the reflective drapes drawn closed.

BabyLettuce.JPG
Seedling stage lettuce in the starting grower (24 plants per shelf). The plants grow in 2" net cups and will soon be moved to other shelves with larger plant spacing. I made my lettuce growers from vinyl fence post material.

EarlyLettuce.JPG
Here's a more spacious lettuce shelf with young plants.

MatureLettuce.JPG
Finally a shelf with mature lettuce. This is the end of the line for these plants; their next move is to my family's salad bowls.

RetiredPlants.JPG
These are the Sweet Cluster plants that have been retired in the Spring. Over the winter they have grown to about 27 feet long.

ModifiedGrower.JPG
A preview of the modified cycled-drip grower I mentioned. I think this will become my preferred method for growing tomatoes.

[MJACTIVIST]

gosh darnoodley that looks great Sequim. Wish I had the space for all that!

Sent from my VS840 4G using Tapatalk 2

[Elagrow]

Wow what a setup you got going there Sequim. I have many questions, regarding several things, and seems that you are likely to have an answer for me.

I also got to ask, how many plants do you grow? Im just starting at 2 indoor plants, but looks like you have a large room completely packed.

My container is 6qt's, and I keep about 5 to 5.5qts of water mixed with the Moon Dust nutrients I have. Do I need to change the water out, and how often, or can I just keep filling it up as the water evaporates?

With the solution temp, what would you recommend to keep pathogens from growing? the inside of my container is roughly 95 F during the day when the HPS light is on (I turn it off at night) im sure the water temp is just a couple degree's cooler then the air around it.
That being said, I know there are systems out there to cool water, wonder if there is systems for cooling just a gallon of water down without going to cold.

Have you compared nutrients at all? What nutrients have you found to work the best?


Also, on a side note.

I have plans for a mister system using soil.

My idea would recycle the water drained from the soil by pumping it back through the misters. is this a viable idea, even if the drained water was filtered out of the soil could it clog up the pump? or become bad water to re-use on the plants?

[Sequim]

Thanks MJ. The growing lab used to be my workshop. All that's left of that is a worktable in the garage that's piled high with junk. But the tomatoes are worth that sacrifice.

[Elagrow]

sorry for the double post but thought this was appropiate as being a total different question...

You need a miniature tomato variety to grow in a setup that small. "Bitonto" is what I would recommend for you. It's a dwarf red cherry. I bought my seed from Territorial Seed Company:
http://www.territorialseed.com/product/11178/238

Do you know anywhere that sells those year round? I googled them and seem to be able to only find that site, and information about them. I even tried Ebay and didnt find any there either.

Nevermind, I found them, the link was to old stock I think, they had more elsewhere it seems.

[MJACTIVIST]

My favorite spot to get mater seeds is WildBoarFarms.com.

Sounds though that you want a determinate cherry verity. Not sure if they do determinate strains.
Hope this helps
L8

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[Cole_Robbie]

I don't, sorry. I don't have any left, either, or I would share. I only ordered one pack last spring as one of several varieties I tried. I hope Territorial gets Bitonto back in stock by spring.

"Tiny Tim" would also fit in your setup. You might try that variety instead.