Vining Tomatoes in countertop hydroponics system
We wanted to start tomatoes since we end up buying packages of cherry tomatoes every week. After trying them traditionally, outdoors in soil, bugs and birds were enjoying our tomatoes more than we were! We also figured we would get more yield through indeterminate variety of tomato.
Indeterminate tomatoes continue to produce fruits where as determinate tomatoes are typically bush types that produce once for the season.
We truly tested the limits of the small ahopegarden! Which is meant for smaller plants in order to receive the optimum UV light the system provides.
Starting with two plants in the system, the vines quickly grew straight up. I fashioned a trellis for vine support as well as relied on a grated shelf we weren’t using much. This area sits within our laundry room, an entrance from the garage. The thought was to have an aesthetically pleasing green room to come home to, brightened by the smell of fresh tomatoes (and UV light!).
We ran into a few issues that we took too long to take action on.
Tomato Pruning
Hydroponic Polinating
Light Requirements
Tomato Pruning:
Our vines went as high as the ceiling! We weren’t getting any flowers though. We were patient and still nothing. We realized that the plant was using so much energy holding itself up and trying to grow straight, that it left no energy for flowering.
We trimmed excessive vines that were growing in areas we simply didn’t want them going. Finally the weight of the strong vines touching the ceiling fell, a week later we had flowers!
What this did was stress the plant by trimming healthy vines, in our simple understanding, the plant felt vulnerable about its survival and realized it needed fruit to reproduce itself. Once the veins fell onto our support shelf, the plant was no longer using energy to stay upright and had energy left over to produce flowers.
Flowers began to flourish but we still had vines spreading like crazy! We took this as a good sign. Unfortunately by letting the plant produce more vines, that was energy taken away from flowering.
Once we figured out energy management of the plant, it was crucial we trimmed “suckers”. Suckers form at the “arm pit” of an established vine or leaf shoot. Unpruned, these suckers will want to grow and produce their own vine.
Don’t be afraid to trim your plant! Especially suckers. Below you can see how a sucker is formed, how quickly they shoot up, and how to remove them.
Hydroponic Pollinating
We watched hundreds of flowers wither and fall to the ground with no fruit being produced. Our problem was pollination! Outside, plants are pollinated by bees, insects, and the wind; indoor gardening, requires you to manually pollinate fruit producing flower.
Tomatoes are self pollinators, meaning they do not need male and female plants, or even male and female flowers like squash. Once we had flowers we began effectively pollinating. The video below quickly explains the two methods we used.
Pollinating Tomatoes
Direct pollination is the toothpick method, where as indirect we would routinely give our plant a small shake as we left for the day. You can also set up an oscillating fan in your systems. This not only simulates wind carrying pollen, but can also strengthen the stems of your plant and provide increased airflow through the leaves and vines.
Light Source
The intent of the green room was a complete success. The vines looked nice running across our wall and the essential oils of the tomato plant freshened the room. However, once we had small beads of tomatoes and constant pruning, they weren’t growing!
The ahopegarden and similar aerogarden systems come with a strong but small grow light suitable for providing the energy plants need. Since our flowers and fruits outgrew our system and no natural light hit this room, we had to purchase a secondary grow light.
We opted for simplicity and affordability and chose this 50W grow light with an attached clamp we could fix to our support shelf. The added light was enough energy for the tomatoes to prosper! We still had minor growth issues we weren’t thrilled about, however, with a stronger light our yield would have been better.
The choice and scalability of hydroponics is your choice. Our thoughts, is it should be fun, especially in experiments like this. We also believe it should remain affordable. Our grow light was cheap enough to do what we wanted, a more expensive option could have increased yield but would require additional renovations to our space we weren’t willing to sacrifice to grow tomatoes.
Small harvest after returning from a vacation and having the plant overgrow. We managed to get about 100 tomatoes before deciding to move onto a new project with our system. However, indoor indeterminate tomatoes would keep producing as long as their managed. Had we applied the above practices earlier, the hundred or so withered flowers would have been edible tomatoes.
Insane Root Growth For Indoor Cherry Tomatoes
Aeroponic Tomato Root Growth!
This was just from a single vining tomato plant within the aeroponic system.
Takeaways
Don’t be afraid to prune! Our fear was hurting the plant or stinting its production, when in reality its vital for space management and energy management.
If you want vining tomatoes, you will spend some time pruning. Also, these weren’t seeds recommended for this type of system.
We ended up removing one of the plants entirely. After careful vine tracing (they were all mingled together) we discovered no matter what, one of the plants just wasn’t flowering, ever, despite our efforts above. We didn’t track PH and EC levels in the solution, but once we removed the “infertile” plant as we called it, our producing plant prospered even more. This was due to more nutrients becoming available as well as more airflow with the previous plant removed.
We had fun with the experiment, our next run on our countertop hydroponics system will be with Tiny Tim tomatoes. This tomato plant should remain small enough to have two or three plants well within the grow light of the system. Stay tuned for blog updates on our Tiny Tim Tomatoes!
