Stewardship: You Get Out What You Put In

"I think I'll go out and water the tomatoes" I said to Jessica thinking that I had not watered the tomatoes growing on the deck and on the side of the house. It had been at least a week since I'd even thought about the tomatoes languishing and dying in the neglected wick systems in the back yard. "Aren't you going to pick those red tomatoes?" Jessica asks, and "It's raining and they're being flooded back there."

I wasn't even sure what she was talking about since I had abandoned the wick system in my mind since the other two systems were doing so much better. There were tons of tomatoes in the three pots on the deck and quite a few, though smaller for the most part (cultivars) on the four tomato plants by the side of the yard. But I said, "Sure I'll go out and look and bring back any red ones."

In the back yard the wick system looked run down and the plants mostly dead or dying straggly, but the tomatoes on them had ripened and I picked ten and brought them in. They were mostly small donas which are a tomato I really like although Jessica thinks they are way too small. But they are very round, very red, and very tasty. I put the ten on my digital kitchen scale where I weigh all my tomatoes. They weighed in at 1# 1oz — 17 ounces total.

I took out my pocket notebook and made a note. That brought the total of the Late Start Systems to 114 tomatoes with a weight of 204.125 ounces, an average of less that two ounces each although there were some tomatoes that had come in at around 13 ounces it wasn't very many. And this is the total as of September 27th — It won't be too long now before the cold weather sets in. So starting late has been not too smart. I have to get a picture of the many many tomatoes on the plants in the deck pots. They are the most luxurious growth this year.

Live and learn really. You get out of things what you put into them. My motivation for the wick systems was to try for a system I didn't have to maintain too much. It worked for a while, but I think the lack of oxygenation probably was a mistake. Still I didn't want to aerate the water or use electrical devices.

I saw a system that was being used in Africa to help people grow hydroponically and they did their aeration by physical shaking the float system making the water splash. They did that for hours a day. That's hard. I suppose I shouldn't complain about what happened when I chose to do nothing. I didn't run out my aquarium air pump and pump tiny bubbles into the water. I just let things sit. I'll have to think of some other recipe for the passive system. Wick systems without oxygenation seem to be a bit of a dead end. Of course it could have been something else. The plants did end up with some plant diseases so I suppose I should do some research in that direction too.

For all the soul searching, the kitchen counter is full of tomatoes. Jessica and I don't need nearly as many tomatoes as we get, although this year with the late start we've not been getting anything like past seasons. Later on I'll put up a contrast between this year and years past with earlier starts.

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.