Tomato Anxiety

Well the Summer is mostly done and my very late start certainly has compromised my harvest, but since I don't do this just to get tomatoes but also to acquire knowledge it has been helpful. The current status of the systems is:

• Wick Systems: pretty much a disaster, whether for lack of attention or disease or failure to aerate the systems or possibly failure to cycle the nutrient and rebalance. I intentionally did almost nothing and the result is that most of the plants contracted some kind of disease and seem to have largely died. Oddly, several are still healthy enough to maintain their leaves and have lots of green tomatoes on them, so I'm still maintaining the nutrient strength.
• House Systems: the systems on the side of the house (4 plants with cut out plastic cups at the base for watering in a typical Virginia clay soil, really poor soil. ) Some Miracle Gro applied randomly, not systematic at all. Two of the four plants have some sort of disease, but all have significant numbers of fruit set and developing. Because of the disease some of the fruit is a little surface spotted.
• Deck Systems: the deck systems are three pots and of the three systems these are flourishing the best. One of the plants has some minor disease, all have significant amounts of fruit set. They have been randomly fertilized with Miracle Gro as well.

Total Harvest: Because of the late start tomatoes have only been coming off the plants sporadically. The very first came off on August 29th and 30th -- a single 1 3/4 oz tomato from the house sytem was harvested and the next day 3 1 oz. tomatoes came off the wick system. Many of the plants are cherries or other smaller tomatoes like donas. Today a total of 43 tomatoes but only 56 5/8 oz. total have come off the systems. That's only about 3.5 pounds, so not much so far, especially given the number of plants.

I'll be tracking this until the end of the growing season which will probably come sometime in October. The late start from seed, May 21st — has compromised the yield and I'd say right now that the wick systems have been a failure despite a very promising start. So it's back to the drawing board there. I'd like to find a system that doesn't require electricity or a lot of monitoring. The wick systems have filled both those requirements for the most part, but after all the purpose is to grow tomaotes and will I've taken quite a few off the wick system so far (34 of the 43 taken so far came from the wick system, they've all been pretty small). The biggest tomatoes have come off the deck system: one at 6 7/8 oz. and two at slightly over 10 oz (one 10 3/8 and the other at 10 1/8 oz.).

We'll see how things develop in the weeks to come. Historically using NFT systems I've gotten a lot more tomatoes but you can't really assess things until you're further into the harvest season.

How Does This Work?

I just reviewed some of the past posts and picked up the fact that some remarks had been left. Sorry I didn't pick up on that earlier and respond. I thought I'd comment on how keeping the plants going is working. Right now the main thing I have to do is keep all the plants in water. Tomato plants transpire (something like perspire) a large amount of water. I've been distributing three gallons of water twice a day among seven plants (four on the side of the house in rather poor clay soil, and three in potting soil in pots on the side deck).

There are fifteen tomato plants in the back yard, five per plastic tub, each tub holding about eight gallons of water. These plants are transpiring around a gallon to one and a half gallons per day. Because the roots extend rather far into the nutrient the tubs can go for several days without being topped off. On hot days the plants tend to transpire more water than nutrient so that the concentration of nutrient actually increases as the water is transpired. I top those tubs off just by putting a hose into the tubs for a short while to replace the water. Then I check the nutrient concentration. A rule of thumb for my nutrient (Total Grow's Steiner) is that an ounce of concentrate will take the Conductivity Factor up about 2 units and I'm running the system at a total CF of 22 to 24.

The wick systems have been left alone for three days and only gone down around two or three gallons. That will increase as the plants continue to grow. I like the passive character of the wick systems although frankly the plants grow somewhat better in NFT systems. NFT systems though require pumps and continuous flow. If the pumps fail or you don't keep the nutrient tank full your system can get into trouble rather quickly. Four or five hours with the pumps down will likely kill most fo the plants, especially on a hot day. So NFT systems require a lot more monitoring. I'm looking forward to tomatoes turning red soon so I can harvest some.

Tomatoes They Are A'Growin

Here's a mix of what the tomatoes that are a'growing look like. There are about six or so varieties out there and I don't know whether I got pictures of any substantial variety of the varieties. But as you can see, there are quite a few green tomatoes on their way to becoming something more. All my neighbors who got their tomatoes going before mine are crowing about how much further along theirs are than mine are — but I think I have more per plant or maybe that is just wishful thinking. Some of the ones on the deck are showing signs of starting to turn red and that's encouraging. In the upper right panel there are a few of the banana shaped tomatoes that are supposed to end up yellow. I'm really curious about them. It's always such fun as the tomatoes start turning and more and more start growing. I'll keep you posted!

What It Looks Like Today: July 30, 2009

Click on the Image for a Larger View
Here we are July 30, 2009 and we've got blossoms and some tiny tomatoes developing. Of course that's what you expect when you started late from seeds on May 21. The rundown of the systems are 1) Deck system in pots with potting soil being fed Miracle Gro -- three plants doing very well, 2) four plants in rather bad clay soil with plastic cups with the bottom cut out so they can be watered and being fed Miracle Gro, and 3) three tubs, each with five plants creating a jungle on an elevated platform in the back yard. These are all hydroponic wick systems, also doing well but pretty much unsupported so just sprawling all over the place. There are a bunch of other tomato plants in pots on one side of the platform on the ground which are the overflow plants that I didn't have the heart to just throw away -- so they're doing their best in pots with just potting soil and water. I may give them some Miracle Gro too.

The nutrient strength in the wick systems is 20-24 CF measured with a Dipstick meter. I took a couple pictures of roots as they grow out of the bottom of the cups down into the nutrient solution so you have an idea of how that works. About all I have to do is go out, water, check the nutrient strength and add a little concentrate to bring it up to the target nutrient concentration. I do that every couple of days. When the tomatoes start getting bigger I'll take some more pictures. The next interesting part is harvesting tomatoes and measuring them. I have this great little electronic scale that reads out very accurately, which I use to make all kinds of weight measurements.

Status Report

Well it's July 7th and I'll just make this a short status update. The three plants in pots on the side deck are doing great. Jessica and I added a third tub to the frame that is sitting on sawhorses in the back yard. I still have a ton of tomato plants just growing in rockwool in an aluminum throwaway cake tin. I keep adding nutrient since as long as they're happy I might use them for something. Along one side of the yard we planted four of the tomato plants in dirt. So now we have fifteen tomato plants in wick system tubs. Three in pots with potting soil that was just laying around on the side deck and four along one side of the house in rather poor clay soil but with some added mulch. I'll add photos when I'm feeling like taking the pictures. Right now they are all small since I didn't start the plants until around May 21st which is very late.

Transfer Time: Wick and Pot

Sooner or later you have to move the babies into the real world, or at least as much of the real world as you're going to expose them to. In this case I decided to try to do wick systems as the primary hydroponics system and use some plain old potting soil pots for a control and back up system. The problem is that I had surgery on June 17th and I'm just not up to a lot of construction. So here is a sort of status update. I actually have three tubs and each cover has five holes in it. There are plastic cups in each hole with slots cut on two sides with a strip of material threaded through (actually a tee shirt cut into strips about 3/4" by 18" or so, one strip threaded through the cup with a little rockwool in the bottom. The plants were in mesh pots in other little plastic cups and now I just transfered the mesh pots with the developing tomato plant into the cups with the wicks.
Each tub holds about 8 to 10 gallons of nutrient and right now I have the nutrient conductivity factor at CF=19, which is just fine at this stage. I may ramp it up a little later. I'm not trying to oxygenate the tubs so we'll see what problems that poses. Also I'm counting on the roots following the wicks down into the tank. This should be pretty low maintenance as systems go with only an occasional ramp up of the water and addition of nutrient to bring it up to the conductivity factor I want.
The back up is three rather ordinary pots with one plant each. These are in a potting soil mix that came with a system I bought a couple of years ago, nothing very special. I'm running these for comparison and because Jessica says we must get tomatoes this year, so if I blow it with the wick systems at least this will fill the "must get tomatoes" imperative. I'll clue you in on how it's going in a while.

Getting on with getting on ...

These little tomato plants have been doing a yeoman job of growing and now are threatening to get everything intertwined, leaves, roots, everything. So it's time to do something. I have these little netpots and I put them in dixie cups and separated a bunch of the plants ... so far seventeen and I carefully marked each dixie cup with where it came from in the matrix so I can identify what kind of tomato plant it is.
Just to keep busy I made a gallon of blue and a gallon of white nutrient concentrate. I do that by measuring a pound of the blue mix and dissolving it in a gallon of water. Then I measured a pound of the white mix and dissolved that in a gallon of water. To make a working solution I take a gallon of water and add an ounce of each of the blue and white mix (I don't mix them together at the concentrate level because that would cause precipitation of some of the nutrients). My working solution is then at a CF of about 24-26 which is full strength for tomatoes, although you can run them hotter than that up to maybe 32. Some people like to do that.
The other thing I did was change the batteries in my old reliable conductivity meter. It's about ten or eleven years old and this is only the third set of batteries. It's an early model Dip Stick (TM) made in New Zealand and when I bought it, it was marketed by American Agriculture of Portland, Oregon. I love it. It is auto on/off, doesn't require calibration and is temperature compensated. It is an all around great conductivity meter.
I'm still not sure how I'm going to deploy these plants when they get a little bigger. I was wandering around Lowes today looking at their plastic stuff and I just have not seen any containers that I really like. I've seen some I could press into service with a little work, but I'm really lazy when it comes to making systems. When you have to drill too many holes it starts feeling too much like work. I got into hydroponics to avoid work. I'll let you know when I figure it out.