RESULTS! — Hydroponic tomatoes: How to grow tomatoes forever..ish. Or for a really long time.

Follow up and results from my cutting to hydro experiment.

I use General Hydroponics 3 part fertilizer:

Other stuff:

Cheap single air pump:

Double air pump:

Air tubing:

Freaking awesome knife to use in the garden:

10 Gallon growing container:

You don't have to let your tomato plants die at the end of the season. You can take a cutting, root it, and plant it in a hydroponics container indoors for the winter. Get those fresh tomatoes all year long. You might even be able to then take a cutting and put it back in the dirt next spring. That part I will have to try in the spring.

[adamthethird]

To cut back on the amount of foliage and to grow more fruit, cut off the 'suckers' and cultivate the main stem and growth tip. You get excellent results that way.

[tigerlilly]

Thanks for the video, not entirely sure but I think you have way too many leaves... really inside you don't need as many as leaves are to protect the tomatoes, which you don't have any bugs or anything inside... the problem with a lot of leaves is that the water and food is going to them, so I'd try pruning it a bit more and see what happens and finally, I'd spike them up so that the stalks are up and the leaves have enough air between them to breath... if they're sitting on top of each other the moisture will become greater...

[livingtheplantedlife]

😂 at the end "Im going to eat this" 😄 Best delicious solution ever..solved two problems at once. ☺🙂 Hope your tomatoes went well afterwards.

[enragedwookie]

Tomatoes are beast feeders can handle as much as 2000ppm with no trouble or burn

[MSeanM]

“There’s an elephant back there for scale, so you can tell how big these are”. Hahahaha!

[anns]

Oh yeah I've learned that about nutrients and lettuce. I'm growing tomatoes via kratky and using a generic tomato nutrient/fertilizer. So far it's growing really well. After about 3 weeks it's getting blooms. I hope I get tomatoes like yours!!!

[catherinebrown]

You might just do a simple kratky for your lettuce (old coffee or mayo tub, jar, etc) and keep the fancier hydroponics for the flowering/fruiting types.

[Yotaciv]

Determinate tomatoes can be grown similarly to cannabis. Early high N late high PK.
Indeterminate prefer a more balanced approach. Only slight shift from N to PK. Closer to the transition to bloom.

I work at a cannabis factory and we apparently use equal parts of each not more then 1000ppm.
Works well in 4”rock wool cubes.

[TypoDiabetes]

I'm glad you mentioned that your lettuce needs less than the tomatoes. Now I need to separate my tomatoes from the dwc I have them in with my romaine and broccoli. Cool cinematography in the beginning by the way!

[yogachant]

I love your sense of humor! LOL. Informative video too!

[joharris]

I live in an apartment so I got dwarf tomato seeds and I am getting huge amounts of tomatoes from 3 little plants. Only one got tall enough to need staking. I like your set up for the lettuce, might try that.

[jackblack]

1:12 took off the jacket to uncover two more jackets "Much better"

[SirSkippy]

Whether you grow tomatoes inside or out, as the tomato plant grows it cuts off supplying nutrients to the lower branches because they aren’t needed anymore. In my garden I cut the lower branches off because of this and I also remove all suckers and only grow a single main stem. I grow 10 varieties of tomatoes every year along with 8 varieties of peppers, eggplant, okra, squash, zucchini, cucumbers, and more..all indeterminate varieties, last year my tallest plant reached 23’ 5”, 3 years ago I had a better boy plant reach 31’ 10” tall. I planted my tomatoes about 6 weeks ago and all were between 6” - 10” tall. Now they’re all between 6’ - 7’ tall already and I still have 4 to 4.5 months of growing season... I use MasterBlend 4-18-38 water soluble fertilizer with 15.5-0-0 calcium nitrate and Epsom Salt (Magnesium Sulfate) and I grow in a traditional soil garden. I am however experimenting with hydroponics, and Aquaponics before going bigger with it. I enjoy Aquaponics because I am also an avid aquarist and fish keeper/breeder.

[fallenslave]

I wish I could be so inteligent, couradgeous and confodent like the man speaking.

[mwcdx]

Nothing grows better then DWC. Add a air stone to the reservoir and really watch it grow even faster.

[HouseDadLife]

That's a bunch of tomatoes, enjoy! Both are looking pretty good. Also a fan of the general hydroponics nutrients!

[jacobmarceau]

Canadian here, it's BBQ weather for sure.

[toddthomas]

I have had great luck using masterblend for tomatoes and lettuce. Very inexpensive too.

[frankfreeman]

Am I the only one to notice that he mentioned the "outer rim"? And may the force be with you!

[jjherts]

This video has just persuaded me to try and over-winter one or two tomato plants indoors. I've always thought that the side-shoots (you may call them suckers) that grow high up on the plant towards the end of summer here in the UK, could be rooted in water and grown slowly indoors over winter.
The problem will be light. The plants will grow etiolated (spindly or leggy) due to low light levels.
But I am thinking .... just take more side shoots, root them and grow them until it's warm enough to put in the Greenhouse outside in the early Spring when it can be quite warm in the day...
So 2 cloned plants from end-of-season side-shoots could be the 'mother clones' for smaller side-shoot clones that will eventually end up in the garden next Summer? This will be a HUGE time-boost on growing from seed.
My Grand-father (as a child in Wales UK) used to sow his tomato seeds around Christmas and New Year ready for his heated greenhouse in the Spring... I remember his plants being trained as cordons to 7 feet. Alas, my greenhouse is NOT heated (he used the old kerosene heaters) ... But does get lots of sun and can get very warm on a cold, sunny winter's day.
Due to Covid-19 here in the UK, Garden Centers were closed bang on time for buying tomato plants (that are very expensive anyway) so I raised a heritage Italian variety (Pera D'Abruzzo) from an out of date pack of seeds this year... Amazingly 90% germination! I actually gave plants away to friends. I did manage to get 2 'Money Maker' plants from a local Garden Center that decided to deliver a few weeks into 'Lock-Down' and cloned a third from a side-shoot (I grow everything in 3s)....
I currently have (5th June 2020) 18 healthy Pera D'Abruzzo Tomatoes and 3 Money-Maker Tomatoes along with 2 Thai Pink Egg Tomatoes.
Another experiment (having grown tomatoes for 40 years since aged 8) is to move away from 1 cordon on my indeterminate and grow 2 cordons (much like a tuning fork shape), just to see if it affects the amount of yield.
Good luck in your garden this year!