I grew early girl tomatoes and didn't think the vegative growth was excessive. It was large, mind you, but not more so than I expected.

i have plants raised 2 feet touching the ceiling, about 6 feet away, within 2 months. Only about 4-8 clusters of fruit developing per plant, none below 3 feet height.

I am currently growing the Boston Pickling Cucumbers. For tomatoes I have Beef Master, Tumbling Tom, Cherry, and Bush.

Most folks do not know that Cucumbers require hand pollination or some really strong air movement. I take a water color paint brush and play Mr. Bee. In order to pollinate the cucumbers you need to understand that the flower are male or female. The female flowers are the ones with the cucumbers growing on them and having flowers at the end of the cucumber. The male flower just grows from the stem, and does not have a cucumber on it.

I takes a lot of pollination to get the cucumber to grow. Since it is a vine, it is also hard to see many of the flowers. I have a bad back, so I cheat a bit. My cucumber plants grow on a 3 foot high table in 5 gallon buckets. I have a hand made trellis behind the plants that I use to train the vines on. This keeps the vines and flower at easy reaching height.

I then take my paint brush and carefully touch several male flowers in the center, then lightly the female flowers in the same area.

It helps if you buzz too .... :-).

In regards to tomatoes, try placing a good strong fan in front of your plants. It should shake and move them the entire day, especially the flowers. Do not over do it of course and be sure your plants are well supported.

I never pollinate the tomatoes by hand anymore, I let the fan do it for me. The cucumbers however need hand pollination.

Hope this helps.

I was recently surprised by the productivity of the Japaneese egg plant. The fruit seemed to grow several inches over night, and there are new flowers all the time. chuck

I grew a Straight Eight Cucumber plant and harvested 4 cucumbers for it. I let one get too big and went to seeding size so the plant stopped producing. At the end the plant suffered from gummy stem blight, but that didn't really do too much damage.

As far as exotic plants go, I am trying to grow a moon and stars watermellon but the tips of the females seem to dry up before I can fertalize them (the temp in my basement where this stuff is growing is 94F at the moment so that could be the problem.)

I'm also growing corn, it is about 4 feet tall.

I just recently added a webcam to my site so people can check up on my garden any time they want a recent picture.

Here is a link that might be useful: my blog

childswonder, it makes a difference what kind of hydroponics you're using. Some plants, like tomatoes, don't do well in deep water culture while leafy things like lettuce absolutely flourish. The big commercial hydroponics farms that grow lettuce use a massive raft system that's a type of deep water culture.

Tomatoes will hardly work at all in that kind of system. For tomatoes I'd recommend an ebb & flow system. You could also probably use what's called a "hempy bucket" because tomatoes are really similar in what they need to grow to the plant that bucket was designed for. It's one of the simplest hydroponic systems around.

Another thing to keep in mind is that tomatoes prefer more acidic conditions than most plants and are absolute voracious eaters. They require more fertilizer than pretty much any other plant - nutrient solution concentrations that would kill lettuce will underfeed tomatoes.

With hydroponics you kind of need separate systems with separate reservoirs for each type of plant you grow. If you do a lot of homework and grow a lot of plants you can probably group a few different kinds together, but they tend to have needs just specialized enough that you have to make sacrifices if you combine them.