[ALadysMom]

Originally Posted by davephan

I’m growing tomatoes in soil and hydroponically, the hydroponically grown tomatoes are now six times larger than the soil grown tomato plants. The hydroponic tomato plants grow dramatically faster than the soil plants because the roots don’t have to work hard to find nutrients.

Growing hydroponically is very easy to do. You can start from seeds, which adds another month or two to the growing process, or buy tomato plants at the store and wash off the soil in the roots. I start with seeds, because I can have the tomato variety I want, and I’m not limited by what the garden center is selling.

The process of growing hydroponically does not use soil. You can start growing with hydroponics on a small scale of one plant or ramp up to giant greenhouses larger than many football fields in size.

I grow my tomato plants in black five gallon buckets with six inch net pots built into the bucket tops. I drill holes in the bucket tops top hold the round tomato cages. The tomato plants grown hydroponically will grow taller than the tomato cages. An air stone is put in each bucket and connected to an air pump similar to aquarium air pumps. Injecting air in the nutrient makes a huge difference in the growth rate compare to not using air. The black bucket color is important because translucent colors let light into the buckets, which causes algae growth, which will be a big mess.

The hydroponic nutrient is cheap to make using the three part dry mix of Masterblend fertilizer, calcium nitrate, and epsom salt. I also use General Hydroponics pH up to set the pH at 6.

You could place the bucket inside a larger decorative planter pot or inside a larger planter box made of wood or stone, to conceal the bucket.

Growing with hydroponics is easy to learn by watching free YouTube videos. After you start growing hydroponically and see how dramatically better and faster the plants grow, you probably won’t grow the tomato plants in soil anymore. I had many extra tomato plants that were started from seed that I planted in soil.

When the tomato plants get large, they can consume up to 2-1/2 gallons of nutrient per day! There’s never any weeding when you grow hydroponically!

If you need help in starting to grow hydroponically, I can help you do that. Using a dead fish as fertilizer is an old Indian trick, but will become a horrible mess if animals smell and dig up the dead fish. The animals can smell and detect the buried fish much better than you can with your nose.

Wow! Impressive post. Thanks for sharing your knowledge in such detail. I don’t love tomatoes enough to do all of that but it reminds me of something I value but others don’t. I recently got a card making rubber stamp that says “Of course it’s handmade. Why would I spend $7 when I could buy $90 in craft supplies?” Tomayto, tom-at-oh