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Wife and I are competing with hydroponic tomatoes. Mine are on the left, hers in the right. Both are fruiting.
(lemmy.world)
this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2026
152 points (100.0% liked)
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Just from my personal experience, be careful with the plants touching the light. I had a similar setup and once the plants were tall enough to touch the LEDs, they somehow leaked water out from where they were making contact and shorted out the lights!
Did you top yours while she just let it go?
Something like that.
She wanted them to get taller, so she trimmed the sides of all her plants off. I told her that's a bad idea, and asked her to leave the ones on the left to me.
I opted for more bushy plants, so I kept the tops trimmed so it would grow more outward. Now I need to keep up to ensure the plant gets all the light it needs as the bushy part moves outward.
Its fun. Its something to do. We both enjoy it and it makes us happy.
Careful buddy, I'm kinda thinking this is pretty neat. We're here to be dull.
Post the results though. I would've done what you did based on my previous experience growing herbs indoors. But I've never grow fruit so idk if that type of pruning would be best for producing fruit.
If that's hydro are you able to lift the plants up and post root pics.
What is the difference? Different seeds? Do you each prune them in your own way? Or is this just a horse race where one of you called heads or tails?
Just fun.
We do our own thing, between pruning, germinating, doing nothing, etc. Whoever gets better tomatoes wins.
What do you win?
Some good tomatoes
Dat a good price
Thats awesome. Bet there is some fun banter over them at dinner time haha. Have you two done this before?
Hehe first time. My wife especially is so excited for fresh vegetables. It always makes her really happy.
This coming spring I want to tear up the flower bed in our backyard that we have done nothing with and plant more vegetables, and maybe even some berries if we can. I feel it will be more difficult for pest control, but it still will be fun.
I may even tear it up before winter and throw a bunch of compost down with some mulch. Plus it helps pollinators if you put some leaves and stuff down
Plus we always have our indoor plants. We have a tower in our basement with a bunch of lettuce that we are going to restart soon, and maybe do some little eggplants or herbs, or something like that. Strawberries, if I can find a way to grow them, would be amazing.
Looks like that lamp needs to move up.
Its as far as it goes unfortunately. I told my wife to trim it, she's like "nahh..."
There are some determinate micro tomato varieties that top out at 1foot, that would fit under the light nicely. Red Robin or tiny Tom. They produce cherry sized tomatoes but aren't indeterminate, so they'll stop growing before they hit the light
I will get those after these stop producing or get out of hand. My wife would like those I think.
If you're not already, throw some beneficial mycorrhizal fungi or bacteria in every time you water. I've grown hydro for about a decade now, and haven't come across a setup that didn't benefit from it. It'll help a lot with nutrient absorbtion, but also fight root rot and infection.
There's a lot of different brands - hydro guard, tribus, great white, orca - that all do pretty much the same thing. I'm currently running great white as I find it to be the most cost effective, but ymmv. You can also make your own by the gallon.
Will these also help with potted vegetables? I got cucumbers, eggplants, candy cane peppers, and other flowers in pots outside.
Some work better than others for soil vs hydro, but absolutely! If you're growing in dirt, dynomyco is fairly cheap, works great, and works even better if you mix in some worm castings. You can also use great white and I think tribus as soil soaks. Southern Ag makes some stuff called Garden Friendly Fungicide that's similar to those as well, but it's targeted more toward root rot, and a little less broad in its applications, but might be easier to get ahold of depending on where you are.
Both are fruiting
I see exactly 1 tomato between both sides (and it's on the left side).
I see two on the left and one on the right.
I see a 3rd on the left next to the small one, but it's barely visible
It'd probably be easier to see if they were ripe. 🤣
Lol yeah... we have like five or six right now. Smaller, and green
how tall a plant can those handle?
Not very tall. At all. I've been researching how to handle that part with the tomatoes. Cherry tomatoes specifically, they still get tall.
You have to really keep up with trimming. You can make it work, you just have to stay on top of everything, between water, trimming, and nutrition.
darn
I've always been curious about mini-supercropping fruit or veggies like this, it looks like a lot of fun! Awesome work, hope you post more later
Fruits plants take so much nutrition. How often are you changing the resevoir, every 1 - 2 weeks?
You know...... the last time I changed the water was never >.> I've been putting it off because I think about buying a siphon and then immediately forget about it because, well, life distracts me.
So, I just bought one, just now lol. First time we've done this still.
I've tried this myself and researched a bunch at the time.
Most people suggest no more than 1 fruiting plant in a reservoir this size (and even several times larger) because what it will do is take the nutrients it needs and leave the ones it doesn't.
So say you have A B and C, fruiting plants need a lot of C. That means that A and B build up in the form of salts and can stop them taking up other nutrients.
So the only way to get them going to any real degree is frequent full changes, not just topping up.
All that said, you're experimenting and having fun and thats completely fine, just sharing what I've learned.
I did this 2 years ago, and this year ended up growing monstrous 2 metre tall vining varieties in 20L semi-kratky buckets.
Incredibly vigorous and impressive but tbh the water changes are still boring and the soil ones are far easier to maintain and doing 80% as well.
Still, a super fun project.
I want them to survive, and do well, so I am definitely going to start taking better care of the reservoir.
This whole planting thing has been fun. Also we will have things to plant during the winter, so we view that as a win too. And being able to take good care of them with regular water changes and nutrients will make it all the better