What you can learnHighly educational compact-tomato diary covering coco-coir pods, PPM-based feeding, water demand, pollination, nutrient overdose, low pH, pruning, ripeness cues, and two harvests.
Ended this project tonight. Here's my self-survey:Plant Grown: Orange Hat TomatoGrow Method: AeroGarden HarvestTime to Germinate: 5 daysTime to First Harvest: 65 daysTime to Last Harvest: 74 daysPlant Spacing: 4 per Harvest (67% usage)Final Height: 5 inchesWould I grow these again? Definitely! I'd just need to find someone who likes tomatoes more than I do, or grow enough of these to make a sauce. I would probably grow one in a Sprout next time, or multiple Kratky mason jars. If I grew it in a Harvest again, I would only do two plants.Lessons Learned: If I overdose a plant, I need to check the PH after a few hours. I also learned that I don't like cherry tomatoes any more than I like regular tomatoes.Here's the second/final harvest, not including any tomatoes from the previous one:
So I bought the PPM meter you suggested. When I set it to PPM and when I stuck it into my AG unit, it said 260. This was about a week after I added the two caps of nutrients that is suggested by AG. Looking at your chart, my AG seems to be over 1K short of nutrients. Am I doing it correctly? Also, my plant is almost up to the light even though I've been pruning it. It seems to be growing more and more leaves. I have noticed more flowers though. None of them have completely bloomed though.
I think the chart applies to full grown tomatoes - mine seemed to be happiest around 900 PPM. I wouldn't recommend going over 1200, since my plants were definitely dying at 1700...I didn't prune mine at all until well after there were tomatoes, aside from the occasional leaf that looked bad.
How big is your plant? I would recommend getting it up to the 500-700 range, at a minimum.I always add a small amount of nutrients and wait at least 30 minutes (running the pump once manually after I add nutes) so it can balance back out.Once you get the hang of it, you'll realize "oh, the PPM is currently this, and this unit is this size, so I need to add x ml of nutes"
My plant is about 1 1/2 inches from the light. I've been pruning it but maybe not enough. It got tall. How did you get yours to stay short and grow wide instead of high?By the way, I added another cap of nutrients which I think helped it. the buds seem to be opening vs before where they just fell off. I'm supposed to clean the unit tomorrow so I think I'm going to mix nutrients into the water and measure before I put the top back on. I may be easier...
Mine stayed short because the Orange Hat Tomato is a determinate variety - so it gets to a set height and puts out all of the fruit at once.The only pruning I did was to remove dead/damaged leaves (mostly after it had already set fruit), although I'm willing to bet that if I had been more careful with the nutrients, I wouldn't have needed to prune at all.
I think I know why mine grew so tall. I have a second one growing in a different AG unit. The lights are at its lowest level because I've been using it to start seeds and then removing them to grow Kratky method. I just noticed they are not growing tall. They're still pretty short compared to my first set which was growing under higher lights because the lettuce was growing so quickly, I had to move the lights up. I also found two new tomatoes growing after pruning. Neither were pollinated by me as they were hidden by all the leaves. Interesting that they turned to fruit without me helping them along. Sharing this in case it can help someone else.
Harvested a bunch more today. Bonus points if you can spot the two that are still a bit too green.I finally got an actual opinion from someone too - "Very strong flavor, soft skin, one of the best cherry tomatoes I've ever had".
After reading your taste test, ERR0R1755 , I definitely want to try growing them when I have an available machine! P.S. I just ordered seeds from Renaissance Farms.
I'm... not the biggest fan of tomatoes, but it tasted pretty close to other cherry tomatoes I've had, maybe a bit sweeter?I pulled another one off and gave it to my sister, who loves tomatoes - she described it as "like a tomato but different", which wasn't very helpful either
These tomatoes are interesting. They're still drinking a lot of water, but the PPM is hardly dropping, so they're not using many nutrients?The plant and the roots still look great.(the green in the roots picture is not algae, it's just a reflection of the leaves above)
I tested the PH out of curiosity, although it's not something I normally do, and the PH is somewhere below a 4.0. Yikes.I siphoned out as much water as I could and replaced it with fresh water. I'll add more nutrients after I check the PH tomorrow.
If they're still drinking a lot of water and the PPM is not dropping, wouldn't it mean your nutrients concentration is correct? PPM is a concentration ratio: nutrients/quantity of water. So if they were drinking water (decrease denominator) but not consuming nutrients (numerator stays the same), the PPM would go up (same amount of nutrients, less water, more concentrated).Since the PPM is staying constant while the water level (denominator) goes down, I'd think they're consuming nutrients at the same rate as they are water, right?
Sorry, I should have clarified - I only test PPM once the reservoir is refilled and the water has had time to recirculate. So the PPM staying consistent was regardless of me replacing water. Normally I would expect the PPM to decrease as the water is consumed and refilled, but I think the PH was the issue. It's probably from the time I overdosed it when I finished the bottle of AG nutes.
I find depending on the project some drink a lot from the beginning, others in the middles and some the whole time. I guess they know when they are thirsty.
I honestly don't know, this was the second time I've grown hydroponic tomatoes, and the first time in an AeroGarden. I did it because I overdosed the plants on nutrients, so I removed all of the leaves with dead/dry edges.Maybe someone else with more experience would know?
Going to do my first pruning of this plant by removing some dead leaves, out-shaded branches, and so forth. I was poking at it a bit and found some tomatoes that had evidently fallen off the plant weeks ago...Here's a picture pre-pruning:
I have a lot of little buds on my tomato plant but only one bloomed and turned to fruit. The rest never opened up. Do you think I should be adding more nutrients? I've been adding nutrients every two weeks.
I got the AeroGarden Plant Spacer Kit from eBay. I used to cut and tape aluminum foil, but I got fed up with doing that and spent the $12 to buy proper covers.What type of tomato do you have? If you have a determinate tomato (like this one), it will set all of its flowers around the same time. If you have an indeterminate tomato, then the flowers will open up over a longer period and you don't have anything to worry about.The advantage/disadvantage of determinate tomatoes is that they don't continue to produce tomatoes - they do it once, then die off. It's nice if you want to grow another plant there, but if you want to keep a tomato plant alive for a long time and continue to harvest tomatoes, then you would want an indeterminate variety.(alternatively, do you have a PPM meter? You can use that to check the amount of nutrients in the tank and adjust accordingly. If you want suggestions for a cheap one, I use this one from VIVOSUN)
I don't have a PPM meter. Thank you for suggesting. What level nutrients does my tank need to be at? The documents that came with my AG unit never mentioned anything about maintaining a nutrient level.
Looking at other threads, it looks like they're determinate and will continue to produce tomatoes. So don't worry The official AeroGarden method is just to add nutrients every two weeks, so the nutrient level goes up and down all the time. If you don't have a PPM meter then don't try to maintain a nutrient level, since chances are you'll overdose the plants. I've done that before.For flowering/fruiting tomatoes, the PPM should be somewhere between 1400-3500. This is the chart I use, and there are other links on the side for herbs or flowers.What type of water are you using? If you're using soft or hard water from a well, for example, then that can cause issues with the nutrients not dissolving. If you notice a brown cloud or sediment at the bottom of your AeroGarden tank, then you probably have the same issue I had in that regard :c
I'm using filtered tap water. I don't ph balance the water but can do it if it helps. I noticed some brown sediment at the bottom when I first started my garden but not so much anymore. How did you fix your problem?
I ended up switching to distilled/RO water, unfortunately. I have access to free RO water through a friend, but distilled water gets expensive pretty quickly. My tap water is completely unusable for hydroponics because of how much is already in it.
You can also home-distill your own water. There are a few tutorials, like this one:www.wikihow.com/Make-Distilled-WaterPretty science-y! A bit time consuming, but do-able and cheaper than buying distilled water.
Just the little bottle, the one that originally came with my Harvest in December. I've been using the same bottle for all of my AeroGardens, as well as (rarely) for Kratky containers, and it has lasted a very long time. I don't do a R&R unless I notice something unusual (like the weird wispy clouds when I started my bird pepper) so that probably helps conserve nutrients.I don't use anything else in my AeroGarden, but I've used MaxiGrow and the three-part MasterBlend for Kratky containers. I think I tried using MaxiGrow in the AeroGarden once and I decided I didn't want to try using a dry nutrient again.I have four or five other unopened bottles from the seed pod kits that came with my other AeroGardens, so I should be good for a while
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I can see that amount used for a Harvest or Sprout which I also have , but don't require much. But I have several tall machine and they use..I mean REALLY use! No Farms for me..no space, and couldnt afford it anyway.
I've been finding some small tomatoes recently with signs of blossom end rot. I think they're just tomatoes that didn't have room to grow or didn't get enough light, because they're always near the center of the plants where the leaves are just packed together.They're all falling off the plant (with the flower/top) when it happens, so I'm not worried about it spreading to the rest of the plant. Have any other tomato growers seen this before?
Error, blossom end rot (if that is your problem) is due to lack of available calcium. Are you using hydroponic nutrients? Sometimes the calcium in fertilizers for soil needs soil microbes to break it down. If you are using hydroponic nutrients, then you need to add a calcium magnesium supplement asap -- again, if that is your problem. In any case, the leaves can become so compacted together that they starve the interior of the plant for light and cause new growth to be trapped inside a ball of overly dense growth. Definitely get rid of the leaves that are causing that.
I just checked and the PPM had somehow risen to 1900... maybe using up the rest of that bottle was a horrible idea.I think that was my issue. I removed about a cup of water and topped it off with RO again.
Looking great! I'm curious - and learning - but I noticed you check a lot for PPM and then adjust nutes, and use different brands. Is there a logic / method you are following?
I don't bother with sticking to a brand or aiming for a specific NPK - I just try to keep it within an appropriate PPM range. I've also noticed that plants do better if I keep it within that range by doing more frequent, smaller, additions of nutrients.The best thing about monitoring the PPM is that I can get a feel for how much nutrients the plants are using, which is very helpful when I'm using my AeroGarden in a weird way. (like my Sprout that had a single Lavender plant in it - I only gave it nutrients twice over the two months that I grew it)As for what I used and why:1. The AeroGarden nutrients for general nutrients.2. CALiMAGic as a calcium and magnesium supplement (since I'm using reverse osmosis water which is as pure as you can get, so I don't have any of the trace minerals you'd normally find)3. Miracle-Gro Bloom Booster since I've seen @cornne using it. I'm not sure how much of a difference it makes, but when I tried it before in experimental Kratky setups it never hurt the plants, and pouring in a glass of light blue liquid makes it a lot more fun.I've also tried a few other supplements, but if you want to start mixing different nutrients and supplements then I'd highly recommend spending the $15 on a PPM meter so you don't overdose your plants.(at some point I want to try growing a Kratky plant and adding "5-Hour Energy" to see what happens)
To further clarify on why I decided to use the other two I mentioned:I used the CALiMAGic at the beginning to establish a "baseline" by having those minerals in my water. I think I added 2ml later on but I'm not sure if I noted it here.I add a very diluted form of Bloom Booster as soon as I see the first flower open up. I don't think it's meant for hydroponics so I am careful with it, but I think it's meant to be used on a regular schedule or something. Since hydroponic plants absorb nutrients faster and more easily, and since you don't have to worry about nutrients running off into the soil, I'm more stringent with it.
Thanks ERR0R1755! That is great info on the Nutes and your approach. It makes sense also since you are using the RO. I actually do have a PPM meter which I use to check on my Kitchen RO from time to time. I also only use RO in the AG. I'll use it to measure the PPM in the Aerogardens and see what recommendations are out there. Thanks
Day 29
UPDATE#10
Grower update
Update #10
🔧Actions taken
💧WateringReported adding water every day to meet tomato demand.
🧪NutrientsAdded two millilitres of nutrients that day.
Lots of flowers, and a few tiny tomatoes thanks to my pollination efforts. They're too small to get a picture of right now, but I'll be sure to post pictures once they get bigger. Added 2ml of nutes.
Day 22
UPDATE#8
Grower update
Update #8
🔧Actions taken
💧WateringAdded more water to the tomato reservoir.
🧪NutrientsAdded another three millilitres of nutrients.
Jun 14, 2020 16:37:09 GMT -5 akivalocal said:Have you grown this type of tomato before? I'm currently soliciting tomato recommendations, as I plan to start my own tom project soon... I have not! This is my first AG tomato grow. The only other tomato I've grown (or rather, the only other one I'm growing) is the Tiny Tim Tomato.I'm growing it in a mason jar using the Kratky method, and I'm eagerly awaiting my tomatoes:
These tomatoes have been an odd experience. My light is still at the lowest height and there's a decent gap between the plants and the light, yet the plants are starting to create a bunch of flowers.I raised the light up one notch - hopefully that will encourage them to grow a bit taller. I may pinch off the flowers as well.
Some tomatoes are naturally micro dwarfs and will start flowering when they are tiny and stay very short all their life. I have never raised the light on my Red Windox box tomatoes (or Sweet Heat peppers) in my Bounty and the tiny plants are loaded with fruit.
If these tomatoes don't increase in height, I might try a longer grow in (or move one to) a Sprout.My only complaint so far is that they like to use a lot of water, which I guess I should have expected. I added more water today and there were some air roots growing into the small area where the water access port is, so I trimmed those back to prevent them from rotting and/or getting in my way.
Day 17
UPDATE#5
Grower update
Update #5
🔧Actions taken
💧WateringAdded water after the plants wilted from an almost empty reservoir.
🧪NutrientsAdded five millilitres of AeroGarden nutrients.
They started to wilt a bit, so I checked and they were almost out of water. Oops.The PPM was around 270, so I gave them 5ml of AG nutrients. It's likely that they'll need more, but I'll have to wait for the nutrients to be mixed well before I check again.
Love to see the progress, ERR0R1755! Have you grown this type of tomato before? I'm currently soliciting tomato recommendations, as I plan to start my own tom project soon...
Growing beautifully! I am so eager to know the taste of these in the end. They are advertised as 'fruity sweet' which appeals to me. Following. I really have my fingers crossed for the success of this project! I am also following how toms do with the CaliMag.
Day 10
UPDATE#3
Grower update
Update #3
🔧Actions taken
🧪NutrientsAdded nutrients after the nutrient reminder and a low PPM reading.
Added more nutrients today!The "Add Nutrients" light came on, and I checked the PPM and it was pretty low, so I figured it was a good time to add nutes.(off to the left you can see some cacti I started from seed, and off to the right is a strawberry leaf that I'm trying to root)
I got impatient and pulled out that last pod to check. No signs of sprouting.I removed the seed and put in a new one from the same seed packet, hopefully it won't fall too far behind.