End of Hydroponics for Me

Here is a picture of my Burpee Sun Gold cherry tomato plant in my Hydrofarm after 2 weeks in the chemicals. The end of the leaves are curling up, drying up and falling off. The plant has plenty of moisture and I have followed the directions exactly. These symptoms probably can only mean too much fertilizer. I used the most diluted concentrations too for just establishing growth. The plant still may have been too young to take any food. It is now set back about 2 weeks to recover and I probably should start over again with a new plant due to the stress.

My other tomato seedlings in potting soil are doing wonderfully and they were incredibly easy. Hydroponics on the other hand is expensive, time consuming, power intensive (bubbler pump running) and high maintenance. The solution requires a full flush out and replacement every 2 weeks. You have to check the pH regularly. You know what? Forget it! The good thing about what I learned from this experience is that regular soil gardening is so much easier. "Feed the soil, not the plant..." says organic gardener, Eliott Coleman. Hydroponics goes completely against this philosophy.

This now convinces me to continue now completely in the direction of organic gardening, biodynamics, and permaculture which are all sustainable practices. I was never comfortable with all of the chemistry involved with hydroponics and it did not seem right. I guess I got caught up in the gadgetry of it all. I have to remember to always keep it simple.

I will clean up and put on ebay this week.

Hydroponic Cherry Tomato

Today I transplanted a Burpee Sun Gold cherry tomato seedling (started 3/1/09) to the Hydrofarm hydroponic garden bubbler. The reservoir is filled with 2.5 gallons of water that I let sit outside for a few days to evaporate any chlorine that was in the city water. I added 7.5ml of General Hydroponics FloraGro and stirred it in well. Then I added 7.5ml of FloraMicro stirred it in and then 7.5ml of FloraBloom. You must stir in at separate times per instructions. These amounts are for a mild growth for the next week or so. I will change the amounts to a more aggressive growth next. I did not want to burn out the little seedling at first since this is my first experience with hydroponic growing. I checked the pH and it was right at 6.0 (exactly yellow color).

I am using a Burpee hybrid terminator seed, which means the seeds cannot be saved from the tomatoes for next year. In the future, I would only like to grow non-hybrid and heirloom varieties in order to be able to save seeds. I had read many good things about Burpee's Sun Gold and Sweet Baby Girl cherry tomatoes that I had to try them.

Right now I have a singe fluorescent light about 12" above the plant. I will move closer in the next few day. I will run the bubbler all the time at first, but may shut off at night once I know it is well established and the roots are into the solution.

Hydroponic Water Farm

This weekend I decided to buy a small hydroponic system from Garden Indoors. They are a distributor for Hydrofarm products. I have been wanting to try hydroponics for a while now and have been searching the internet and watching YouTube videos. It appears like an exact science and I wanted to build something from spare buckets, tubes, wood chips and a pump. I decided against that idea for now and I would rather learn from an established system. It makes more sense. Garden Indoors was really helpful and answered all my questions. It was a little expensive, but sometimes it is worth it. Trial and error sometimes can be more expensive and frustrating in the long run. I am sure that I will learn from this system and be able to build bucket systems in the future. I plan to grow a cherry tomato plant in this. I am starting seedlings right now in rockwool for transplanting into this container in about 2 weeks. I will be posting progress on how it goes.