Outdoor hydroponic tomato

Well it's that time of year again and i'm giving my outdoor tomato operation another go. Last year I was cursed by blight, so attempts to keep more airflow thru my plants this year will be priority. I'll get some pics up later but as of now my plants have been transplanted for about 2 weeks, have restarted root growth and have tripled in size. I have 4 IND big boy style and 3 IND plum style eating about 950ppm already so I can already see im going to have my hands full this year lol.

My question to all of you veteran gardeners out there is related to plant support. Last year I wrapped my plants horizontally with bailing twine, which I believe made my plants more subjectable to the fungus due to the lack of air flow. This year I plan on using only the trellus to hold them up. I've looked into ideas like using plant netting and tying it up onto the trellus. Ive heard about the teepee stick thing, tomato cages etc. What I plan on doing is just tying one main string from the bottom of the stalk and wrapping it all the way around the plant all the way up and securing it taught to the trellus. Once flowers begin to fruit i'll attach separate cords to hold up heavy areas. Staking might be an option too i'm not sure as they are already a foot off the ground in the system. Last year I believe they were 6' tall and 3.5' wide, the big boys that is. Any ideas for a easier/better support system?

I think youve covered it pretty well Chalkie , i use the bamboo stakes and tomato cages.So far it works a treat , the only thing id reccomend is an idea my missus had and thats to tie heavy stems to the cage and soforth use womens stockings.Ask nicely for old ones and shred them into lengths for tying the plant.What the big deal is that the stockings will stretch and allow movement , wont restrict or choke any part of the plant.

Wow I never thought to use stockings!! That was one of my issues I had to go out there daily (well daily anyways but) and mess with the hoops I tied to make sure I loosened them. Thanks for that now to find some stockings!!
On to my new issue, between these 7 plants they drinking about 4 gal. a day of water. I have the nutes right about even with the water uptake so I guess they arent searching for nutes, tho they are sun hogs haha. The tote I have is buried alittle over a foot to try and keep the juice cold, and its worked pretty good so far. But since I know these plants are gonna hit 6', about 2' now, I think ima need a bigger tote then this 15 gal haha. I have pics from 2 weeks ago and pics today just gotta wait to get back tonight before I can post them. Thanks for the quick response!! Sorry it took me so long!!

Ok here's the pics from 2 weeks and 4 weeks. Man these things are gonna make a jungle i'm sure, wonder how many suckers i'll pull lol

http://s280.photobucket.com/albums/kk176/Borderline78/2010 Plants/?action=view&current=100_0775.jpg
http://s280.photobucket.com/albums/kk176/Borderline78/2010 Plants/?action=view&current=100_0801.jpg

Those are looking great Chalkie , you'll be seeing a load of tomatos.Only thing is ..what size pots are you using ?They dont have to be huge but too small is going to stunt growth.They do look very good though.


Whoops..just seen thread title again..hydroponics.

Yea so far so good. Had about 3 sucker casualties yesterday so I made sure I got out there today to tie them up good. All the flowers seem to be aligned atm at the first split so it shouldn't be too hard tieing them up later. Still drinking like little horses, nutes haven't changed much.

For the pot size stunting you absolutely right, my issue to stunt will be root room. Others 'I've seen build these kind of systems had no rocks/hydroton in the tube. I have a decent amount just so they have something to structure on, we will see but last year they did well with it. Only difference is last year I only had 3 tomato's and 4 pepper plants. One day I noticed the tube wasn't draining well so I went investigating. Come to find there was 4' long roots growing down the exit hose haha. This year the tube is loaded up with screen at the end so they'd have to fight to pull that off again. I'll make sure to get some more pics up in like a week, hopefully they will be more to talk about then!!

Its interesting Chalkie as ive not tried this method before.Ill definately keep a watch for your posts.

Got back from a 3 day vacation and my hired friends didnt do a great job!!! When I got up this morning the res was almost completely empty and it was 80 degrees!!! All the plants were sunken over in disgust lol. I've been flushing them on a constant cycle with plain water today to bring them back up to par. Tonight just before dark ill shut it down, rinse out all the salts, and refill it back up with nutes/water. Tomm if they are up for it i'll post pics!! In my friends defense, the roots somehow made their way down the exit hose again so most of the water probably over flowed. I've made adjustments, but just them being alive does say alot for someone thats never did hydroponics before haha

Well they've recovered and got a good trimming!! Still at 1000ppm but now it's 50/50 veg/bloom, at about 5-6 gals. a day. Usually I like to clean out the rez after they burn thru the 15 gallons the tote holds but it appears (following the ppm/ph) that the salts aren't adding up as fast as I thought they would. The Big Boys are coming along faster then the plums, I have about 12 tom's on each Big Boy and only 3 or so on each Plum. I trimmed off enough leaves to fill a wheel barrel and they still look abit full lol. So far so good, no bug issues/diseases/ or burn. I'll post some more in a week or so.

Does anyone know what causes that split at the bottom of tomatoes? I haven't seen any of the BB with it yet but I found a few plums like the one in the picture with it. Some people have told me that's due to over watering. Possible when I was nursing them back to health and had the water cycling 24H?

Onto full flower we go!! Did some moving around, opened up flower sights and gave everyone more room. 1000 ppm 6 gallons a day. Hopefully now that i'm not loading them with as much N they wont get too much bigger lol. Got some interesting roots growing here tho, about 2 feet up the stem on some plants they are throwing out these huge clusters of roots. Friend says they do that but didn't give me an explanation why, air roots? Anyways not much more to do really, just sit back and wait for food!!

I did a hydro veggie garden this year for the first time. It did fair, but I live in Texas so I Dced it last week when we wnt over a 100 degrees and stayed there. I couldnt keep my res cool enough dumping ice in there q4 hours. I also wasnt sure about the feedind schedule for Tomatoes. Could yall elaborate on that and also can you mix tomatoes and Cucumbers? Use the same res? I saw the same thing on mine the root thing and didnt know what to make of it. It came on real strong after a 3 or 4 days of rain, thought maybe that was the deal. I plan on starting a hydro veggie greenhouse business so any information yall have would be so apreciated. Thanks and have a great day!

Great system by the way.

BluntLover said:

I did a hydro veggie garden this year for the first time. It did fair, but I live in Texas so I Dced it last week when we wnt over a 100 degrees and stayed there. I couldnt keep my res cool enough dumping ice in there q4 hours. I also wasnt sure about the feedind schedule for Tomatoes. Could yall elaborate on that and also can you mix tomatoes and Cucumbers? Use the same res? I saw the same thing on mine the root thing and didnt know what to make of it. It came on real strong after a 3 or 4 days of rain, thought maybe that was the deal. I plan on starting a hydro veggie greenhouse business so any information yall have would be so apreciated. Thanks and have a great day!

Click to expand...

Ouch, tempts don't get that high by me, or at least not on a consistent basis. The most i've done to control temps in my rez is bury it, seems to stay around 70 ish a foot and some change down. When it gets hot for a long few days I throw in 2 liter bottles that have been freezing in the fridge in rotation, depending on rez size and tempts it can turn into a job on its own!! As for my feeding schedule I have a timer on 15 min on- 30 min off. Last year we had a lot of rain and I got a lot of cracks in my tom's, so to promote less cracks and discourage humidity/fungus I changed my schedule from 15 min on-15 min off. I haven't gotten good enough to organize a mix grow yet, but I do know tom's are light hogs and the strain I have don't hesitate to keep growing...and growing etc lol. I did mix tom's and peppers last year but I had to kill the tom's due to blight so im not fully sure if they would have excepted the same amount of nutes.

Building a hydro veggie garden business is something i've pondered myself. Tho I do see a lot of start up costs that make me cringe, if organized and advertised right i'm sure it would be a success. You might be able to handle some of the temp issues with that special liner for the roof at that point!! But I must say making your own nutes would be a must at that size, I'll be making my own next year that's for sure.

And thank you for the compliment, been a bit of a struggle but im a stubborn one!! Lemme know if you have any more questions I'll do my best to answer!

Quick update. Their still growing so i think its about time i top them. And im not sure if i will need to start cutting off flowers/small toms so the others fully ripen before the end of the season. Figure i have a few months left of decent sun so maybe ill just leave em for now. Lots of big clusters (5-6) on each flower site. I have a few that are almost the size of an 8 ounce tom you see in the store so maybe ill have some ripen soon. But as for being in control, somewhere in the last few weeks ive lost complete control over them lol. Theyve regrown their inside leaves that i originally trimmed off, and theyve gotten so heavy my flimsy trellus has cracked in 2 locations. Next year, STEEL TRELLUS!!! Still drinking the same ppm but now up to 8 gals ish a day.

Ill post some pics tomm!

looks good!

Here's the pics I promised. Really cant find a spot to get a good picture to show the actual size of these freakin things, but their huge. Bout little more then 5' high maybe like 4' foot wide. Ive been tieing up the small side suckers so the plants have really bushed out. Hopefully my poor trellus holds up to the job!!

Thats pretty cool, tried to PM you but it won't work. Ever find anything on about the corn, wondering cuz I've found diddily.

PinchedNerve said:

Thats pretty cool, tried to PM you but it won't work. Ever find anything on about the corn, wondering cuz I've found diddily.

Click to expand...

From what im being told they will work. Just plant them like you did the original corn and you should be fine!!

Giant green worms on my plants!!! So I did some research, Horned tomato worms is their name. So far ive found 3, 2 had parasite hornet eggs on them and 1 didnt. I originally killed the one with eggs on it not knowing they would eventually kill him and attack others. So now there is one that I know of being eatten alive by the wasps as I write!! About to go build a set of support beams for my trellus as its bowed like a damn boomerang lol. I'll post pics up tomm of these monsters, some of these tomatos are freaken HUGE!! Anyone know what turns tomatos red? Is it time or light stage? And when would yall think is a good time to start clipping off new flowers? Thanks in advance!!

That would be time. And thanks for that.

Thank you pinched you was right!!! got my first 2 today starting to turn, never thought id be so excited about a tomato haha