>>The plants trained on the screen are really getting kind of ratty looking.

The picture shows curling yellow leaves. Are they getting enough water and light? If not enough light, you can try to add some foil underneath some of the leaves to help bounce some of that light back onto the plants.

Indeed the leaves are in a sorry condition. They where a little dehydrated in that picture, we are adjusting from the initial one watering a week schedule. They are beginning to drink a lot more and are getting moody. They'll go from springy and turgid to sad and wilty in a very short period of time, not more than an hour or so. The medium they are in has great uniformity, with no wet or dry spots. When it finally runs out of moisture all 8 gallons of the medium gets dry in a hurry; with the bubblers exacerbating this issue all the time. Usually, as they are right now, leaf yellowing and curling don't occur simultaneously. Fat Momma has a curling issue, localized only on shoots that are near one of the nasty 90 degree bends in the stem. In the overhead picture this is all that is visible. None of her lower leaves are bothered and look great, a trait shared by both plants. They are shaded a bit and receive a lot of "spill" from the nearby Metal Halide lamp. Big Boy has very little leaf curl, but his leaves are mottled and yellow in places. I think we where actually a little over-lit with the beastly orange 400 watt HPS lamp hanging within 14-16 inches over the screen. Plus the Metal Halide is still up and hangs less than 36 inches away. We've backed the HPS off 6 inches since then and they appear a little better, though Fat Momma still looks pretty pissed.

We hit them with corn-cob ash last weekend and just today fed them with Bloom Burst. Its a 12-55-6 salt fertilizer that also carries a nice little chelated Iron (.10%) boost. It was a light dosage, just 1 teaspoon per gallon, as the medium carries some hefty organic nutrient content already. We're hoping that this combined with the Blossom Set Spray (active ingredient: cytokinin) we'll be looking at rapid blooming, fruiting and ripening. We're hoping that if we can get some fruit set the mad vegetative vine growth will slow down a little. In my experience plants, especially ones in aggressive growth situations, respond surprisingly rapidly to cytokinin. If all continues to go as I've predicted we'll see fairly apparent change by the middle of this week. We'll post new pictures then and perhaps do a better job of illustrating the layers of foliage and the differences between the older less stressed leaves and the newer rather more tortured ones that where predominantly featured last time around.

I have a better blossom picture today.

Enjoy

I am a little shocked as I just showed my first open blossom Sat We have 'maters!! That realy snuck up on me.

I believe I see two more when I examine the other flower sites. This is pretty cool! No I guess I could still get BER and loose these little guys, but I will keep my fingers crossed. I mentioned earlier that we took our vibrating air pump that runs the bubbler tub and put it on the poultry net to simulate high frequency vibration, but i did not Q-tip these flowers or anything yet. It must work for some no fuss pollination. Who would have thought. Everybody wish our new little guys luck in their early development. Yea!

Electric toothbrush or just shake for 10 sec. twice a day. Morning and eveneing

Looks like the plants are recovering nicely. How many days from seed to blossom??? It will also be interesting to discover the number of days from set to ripe.

@geeboss
Both methods we investigated long before we even set flowers. We had settled on manual pollination via Q-tip, but for fun decided to try setting our air pump on the screen as flowers first started to show up. The air pump drives a surprisingly powerful vibration through the screen and its supports. The results seem promising, blossoms that had just opened on Saturday had set fruit and where taking off late the following Tuesday without us ever messing with the flowers themselves. If this wasn't a fluke we should have good pollination rates without ever lifting a finger.

@vrkelley
Dad and I where talking about this last night. Blossoms had first started opening on Saturday, just as the plants where turning 6 weeks old. Now that's six weeks from being placed in our bubbler tubs, we put them in when they where very small; just starting to sprout their first set of true leaves. They where only a week from seed (thats 1 week from us putting the seeds in the sprouting medium) when we did the transplant, putting them at almost exactly seven weeks from seed when we first saw flowers. Pretty quick I think, but I'm still most impressed with our 3 day gap between the first blossom opening and our first set fruit.

VRKelly,

Some one, ( Master gardener ) at work threw a gauntlet that we can not make a ripe tomato, by the end of Feb! That is about 40 days from our pea size unit today! When I asked this forum the consensus was 50-55 days for a ripe tomato. This will be another test of the whole screen nutes light supercropping philosophy. That is about a 25% improvement over std good conditions outdoor grow. Pretty tough. But the whole system has been tuned up to this point to grow big abundant fruit indoors. The challenge is noted and it should be real fun to see where it goes! Watch along and we will see.

Larry

hautions11

I've never grown a tomato so I didn't know how well my plant is doing. My results are similar. Took 6 weeks from seed to flower. I didn't know about fruit setting, as soon as the flower falls off, there's a tomato.

Flowers started showing up on 12/27/08. There's probably 35 green tomatoes but nothing is ripe! I'm not sure why it takes so long to ripen fruit. But there's a total of 4 truss es at various stages. Plant is still growing.

>>consensus was 50-55 days for a ripe tomato.

When the seed pack says 50 days to mature, they mean from the time it sets to the time it ripens? I thought the days was the time from seed to eat. No wonder nothing is producing "on time".

The package days to maturity are based on planting a 6-8 week old plant and then it is 50-65 days. Your determinate variety should be faster then that. We think our nutes pots and light will speed up set to fruit time on big 1#'ish tomatoes, but only time will tell. Keep posting pics of your plants, it is great!

>>planting a 6-8 week old plant and then it is 50-65 days
What? So really it's 120 days to maturity (seed to eat). Deceptive marketing. This must be some outdoor metrics. What does a "6-8 week plant" looks like??? Is that a 8" tomato plant? or taller???

With no special light it is and 8-10" pant

Hehe, I know the majority of this project appears to highlight the organic methods of hydroponics, but imagine how fast they grow when you are giving them the same nutrients at 2 or 5 or 10 times the concentration and oxygenate the roots using H2O2.

And yes, they still taste very good. Peppers grow in a similar manner.

--->Rob

pyro,

All you have to do is look at the Hrdo plant picture at Epcot listed 10-15 posts above. We like the combo potting mix and oxygenated water bath with the added micro life in the grow medium. The reason we started this diary is it is hard to find well documented grows from start to finish with good time frames and then results past "this is my first tomato" How about 3's produced etc. We still have very tight time line to get a ripe tomato by the end of Feb. We have a fighting chance, but it sure is fun trying. We will definitely have some ripe ones in March some time. Thanks for the interest and keep watching.

i have a few tomato plants growing in my coffee cups on my window sill..looks pretty good..

desert,

Me too! I have two plants in pots in a south facing window. They are both starting to flower. Just natural sunlight and potting soil.

Very interesting techniques! I am trying winter gardening indoors for the first time this year, using aquaponics. I have 2 Shubunkin goldfish in a 40 gal stock tank and a 24 gal growbed with pea gravel, flood and drain with an autosiphon. I was reluctant to spend all the money for the lighting needed for fruiting tomatoes but am just using a 4' fluorescent fixture and 3 hooded cfl. I started some seeds in net pots with hydroton, and some by throwing seeds into the pea gravel. Tomatoes did poorly in both situations, the plants sprouted but then just sat and didn't develope, so my system mostly has pole beans, of which I've eaten a few, cucumbers which are getting close to the first female flower after amazing #'s of male flowers, some Chinese mustard which has yielded a few leaves, and some basil and cilantro. They are growing very slowly but may be close to doing better.

I like aquaponics because of lowering the cost of the nutrients and possibly in future producing edible fish. I can see the advantages of your system with the more natural growing medium and inclusion of mycorrhyzal fungi. When I can improve my light setup I'll have to see how I can work something like that in.

Here's one of probably many threads on tomatoes from the Aussie Backyardaquaponics forum, which talks about training tomato vines and has some photos (their foliage doesn't look so great either), including a phenomenal commercial tomato hydroponics photo-

http://backyardaquaponics.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1731

Nancy

Here is a link that might be useful: aquaponic tomatoes

Thanks Nancy. Light is very important especially in the winter here. I am sure Slo and des cat have massive plants and are expecting 30 40 50 # yields from there coffee cups, but understanding the important drivers in the grow process can help yields significantly. I have been very impressed with the addition of simple HPS and MH lighting. No horticultural bulbs, no $150 reflectors, but solid lighting great organic nutes and flat screen training seems awesome so far. It will be interesting 2-3 months down the road to see how full the screen is and what we need to start hacking off. Lot's of fun and happy gardening.

Larry

Nanacy, after reviewing your link. I am thinking about taking off all the leaves below the screen. That accomplishes the same thing. I could also chase the fruit set around the screen removing leaves. I'll defiantly take this in to account. Thanks.

That purpling on the underside of the leaves (and often on the stems) is a common sign of Phosphorus deficiency.

It's not uncommon from what I've seen for the younger plants to get that, but it doesn't tend to be a problem if you're using a high quality plant food. Most garden store brands don't cut it in hydroponics, from my experience.

I switched to a 3-part made by Advanced Nutrients awhile back that has cleared up all the nutrition problems I had.

>>Some one, ( Master gardener ) at work threw a gauntlet that we can not make a ripe tomato, by the end of Feb!

Oh really? How's HIS garden doing :p Hey! I picked 2 yellowing cherry tomatoes yesterday (about 90 day old plant). The bad news was that I accidentally broke the tip off of this indeterminate. Gahhh. The tip is now rooting in a baggies. Pretty sorry shape!

>>That purpling on the underside of the leaves (and often on the stems) is a common sign of Phosphorus deficiency.

@garysgarden:
We did indeed have some purpling which is visible in some of the earlier shots. This was to be expected as we had only used organic ferts pre-loaded into the medium at first. We went light on the phosphorus at this point so that we could be nitrogen-heavy early on to induce rapid vine growth. Additionally, I didn't want to load them up too much early on because I knew down the road (we just did it about 2 weeks ago) we would be applying Green Light's Bloom Burst which is an incredible 10-55-6 salt fert. Having much phosphorus pre-loaded could have lead to an overdose when used in conjunction with the bloom burst. At the same time we also applied corn cob ash, a great organic potassium supplement that packs between 30 and 35% potassium by mass. I believe we got the timing right and the plants should now have all of the Phosphorous they need for flowering and fruiting.

Our first big set-back. BER has set in on the first three tomatoes on Big Momma! OHHHH NOOOOO! I searched the forum and read all the various reasons. It is not wet or dry conditions but we do see a couple of potential issues. Very fast growth appears to be one of the drivers and if we went a little overboard on our corn cob ash ( Potassium overload ) either or both of those could contribute. I also noticed that roma's appear to be some what of a problem with BER any way. Not much we can do, may try the epsom salt foliar spray, but it will probably just have to grow out of it! Take a look.

Pretty sad! Oh well, we will push on from here. Happy gardening!

Larry

Yeah, Roma's are notorious for BER. I think I remember reading once that they suffer from it more than any other strain, but I could be wrong on that.

BER is almost exclusively a Calcium deficiency but as you noted too much Potassium can lock out Calcium even if you have plenty of it.

You might try flushing them to see if you can wash out some of the excess K.

The commercial high phosphorus formulations are often spin offs from the hydroponic pot "bud" growers market. These are not interested in the subsequent fruiting crop.
High phosphorus is not a formulation always transferable to other plants, even though the stages of development look to be the same.
As for tomatoes: the nitrogen can be progressively diminished at flowering, at ripening & during harvest; reduce potassium at least when harvesting; curiously the phosphorus needs stay the same from flower through harvest.
Gary gave you good advice: flush your growing medium at this stage & then make sure your calcium is adequately utilized (looks like you top water - dust off your hydroponic EC ratio chart).
Speaking of the technique:
In tropic field crops we take old plants of indeterminate tomatoes,eggplants & peppers that have become unproductive, twist their stem closer to the ground & they renew growth low down on the plant.
Seems some pot growers came across this in Africa or S.E. Asia & used it for
quick volume turn around time under lights.

It will be interesting to see if any of the other tomato fruits develop BER. Researchers have found "Stress" to the plant more than anything else causes BER. And one thing I didn't think about before when "supercropping" the plant is how much stress are we putting on the plant? Something to think about. Ami

Interesting observations by all. Fortunately we have a plant in a regular pot that got all the same nutrients and very hard supercropping regiment. Not tubs and real oxyniated roots to put super fast growth in to affect. It should be an interesting comparison. More pictures in a bit.

Hi Miesenbacher,
I'd like to read some more about the stress factor relevant to BER.
It could be of use for the tropical agricultural development projects I work
with. Any lead would be appreciated.
Pardon my off post etiquette, Hautions,
Thanks for sharing your interesting work.

Here's a link I was talking about. Stress comes in many forms and this paper from the University of Nebraska explains it pretty well.

Here is a link that might be useful: Blossom End Rot in Tomatoes

It appears the article is referring to moisture stress and i am not sure if supercropping or even the training through the screen could contribute as well. It is hard to pick out a firm answer here. The control plant in the regular pot appears to be free of BER, at least at this point. The big boy non roma style looks like it's first fruit might be affected as well. The plant in the regular pot is a big boy with the same nutrients and light, but slower less aggressive growth. The next few weeks should display BER in the big boy tub plant and the regular pot version, if it is going to show up there. It may just be the rapid growth referenced in the article rather then stress induced by supercropping/training. We will keep you up to date.

In response to: Posted by hautions11 6 (My Page) on Sat, Jan 10, 09 at 16:11

I must admit I kind of forgot to follow this thread. Let me explain a couple of twists to my "ultimate" growing system:

First off, I super-crop only the main stem and for only the first 12 inches of growth. I grow in perlite and when super-cropped seedlings are about a foot and a half tall, I transplant them to a larger growing container; again 100% commercial perlite (medium to small granules).

Here's the first trick: I start seeds in a 2" net pot and when I transplant, I put about an inch of perlite in the bottom of the new container, then set the entire 2" net pot on it and fill up the container BURYING at least 8" of the super-cropped stem. This creates a mammoth root stock.

Next, I suspend a rope from about 5 feet above the newly-transplanted stock and begin tying off the main stem to this. The rope supports the weight of the main plant.

As Mr. Tomato grows, I trim off side growth at about every other node. This allows enough vegetation for fruiting, but doesn't create shadows, which would otherwise starve lower leaves from light exposure. As the plant nears flowering, I use the "single-truss cropping" method. All that means is I cut out the tops as they go to flower. I rely on only one or two flower trusses about mid-way up the entire plant stalk.

I grow 'indeterminate' tomatoes, which means they will grow for several seasons. By cutting off much of the side growth and limiting their height, together with a massive 'trunk' and super-cropped stem, they produce fruit like you wouldn't believe and it's all at waist height so this old fart doesn't have to bend over to pick it off.

As I harvest, I let newly-formed flowering trusses remain and when I've picked all the tomatoes off one truss, I trim it off and move on to the next one and so on.

As far as "forcing" oxygen, I guess I didn't tell you, but I aerate my nutrient tub (about 30 gallons) with a 12-inch air stone 24/7. I feed my plants with aerated nutrient using the "old fart drip irrigation method". What that means is I have both gravity-fed irrigation as well as a submersible pump in my nutrient batch tank. When I water the plants, I just flick on a switch and it supplies nutrient at the proper pH and EC to my hose, fitted with a little spring-loaded, trigger nozzle.

I spent a lot of time determining just how much nutrient to give my plants and in the summer, I supplement nutrient delivery with a twice-a-day sprinkling with high-calcium-content tap water on a little battery-operated timer I spent a fortune for! Hey, it works--it keeps things wet and cool in the summer and prevents me from over-feeding the plants.

When plants (strawberries and tomatoes) are in fruit, I also "tweak" my nutrients with MgSO4 (Epsom salts) to maintain the proper EC, while cutting back on the nitrogen. Nitrogen is for leaves!

I hope that clears up a few things for you. The Web site is undergoing metamorphosis and is almost a butterfly; stay tuned.

Here is a link that might be useful: TenGreenThumbs

> then set the entire 2" net pot on it and fill up the container BURYING at least 8" of the super-cropped stem. This creates a mammoth root stock.

hat is a net pot?
I made 'pots' this year from burlap sacks for maximum oxygen exposure.
Just wondering if thats similar to your method???

Hey! Good thinking. I grow some items in burlap too. Anyway, a "net pot" is a plastic pot. I use 2" ones. Imagine a small plastic pot that has slits cut both vertically and around the base; that's a net pot.

Go to my profile and click on my Web site, then go to Galleries and scroll down until you see a hand holding a tomato seedling in a little pot. There are white roots extending from the bottom of the thing. That's a net pot!

Questions? Email me from my profile or Web site.

I would think that after super cropping a stem you'd have a slower root growth response from that stem. I know that if you bury a tomato stem it will grow roots all along the buried length, but if I'm not mistaken the supercropping thickens the skin and would likely inhibit root growth.

I could be wrong, has anyone checked that?

>>Our first big set-back. BER
Dang! I also had a few disappointments. The plant produced 40 cherry or 4.5 oz of fruit. It's now 48" long. How many trusses should a plant that size have?

Very few new the flowers. I've started adding epsom salt to the Miracle grow that the plant gets every 10 days. About 1X/mo the plant gets a side dressing of Dr. Earth. Stuff stinks to high heavens as it rots under the soil. Even 2 air cleaners can't keep up with the soil/Dr. Earth odor -- bothers my nose! The plant has no suckers...maybe I should let the suckers produce too????

Very meager results for such healthy plant.

I started my seedlings dec 30 and have three different projects going. The TUB (like the one that started this thread for the most part) I call it with the bubbler or TUB, the Aero garden and the regular ol pot method. Cant tell much of a difference from the Aero garden and the TUB but the regular ol pots are slow. The Aero and the tubs are HUGE and I need to promote some flowering here real soon. But I stopped the super cropping and you can tell by the big stalks half way up and the slimmer ones near the bottom, I seen they were stessing badly but now there much happier. I will keep the TUB project year after year without using the make it fast method but rather let them do there thing, only because I could see they were not liking rushed you could say. I have noticed that they like just some reguler Miracle grow food here and there and only watered about once a week in the tubs.
I tryed many different lights and what I came up with for the TUBS was a BIG lamp shade lined with foil inside and three 60 watt flourecents inside (you know those spiral things that only take 13 watts they say), its the same thing the Aero gardens use for the most part and thats what made the plants the happyest. I did burn some leaves here and there because they grow so fast I did'nt raise the lamps enough, they don't get hot at all but will dry the leaves.
On a different note:
My green beans have been nuts all winter inside and they like low lighting.
The Boston Picklings Cute Little Cumbers are crazy in the TUB/bubbler environment with flowering at about 2', I also tried them in pots but no success they are flowering at about 4" tall, so less light is my guess on that experiment.
My family are hot pepper freaks so we keep many varieties going all year long indoors here in Michigan.

nuttyd Nice distraction from tomatoes! How many bean containers do you have and in what size containers?

garysgarden:

I'm waiting for things to grow a bit and I'll be putting up a slide show regarding super cropping as well as burying super-cropped stems deep in perlite. I've even thought of pulling a few plants out of the growing medium to photograph their root development. If I do that, I'll include it in the slide show on my Web page.

Hide and watch!

Sorry about bringing up the beans, but I grow them in 6"wide 8"deep and 3'long containers.I do them 5 beans per container with miracle grow potting soil and thats it.With some feeding I'm sure you could plant more in that size container, but mine are doing really good as is.

Hey the beans are great! Sorry for the lapse in posting, but between work and results...big problems. Our plants are devastated. This week Zach ran 3 gallons of water through the tubs and flushed the current nutrient content. This will stunt all growth, but we were obviously down the wrong path. Here is a good shot of the weave and the physical method appears very sound. We probably pushed the plants too hard and made a nutrient lock of some kind.

The weave worked and the toms hanging below the netting is great. BER is devastating and the half rotten red toms are dismal. In my favorite movie, the worlds fastest Indian, there are a lot of dismal failures leading up to great success. The overall shot of both plants is just as ugly.

The peppers are growing well but we are fighting a HUGE bug infestation. Here is our first pepper but note the little beasties in the shot.

The rest of the plants are either fighting bugs or doing great. Some new tom starts for a friend and doing well also.

We will try to keep everyone updated, that's all for now.

Larry

Ah, you'll never know until you try.
Thanks for posting the "ugly" pics. This reminds me of my plum tomatoes from last year. Same end result, probably a different reason since they were outside. I am going to start a few seedlings tonight and supercrop them. As an experiment. I'll start a second crop later on. And those wee beasties (small furry, softbody insects- fergit what you call 'em), I had them on an indoor plant for YEARS and I just couldn't get rid of them. I said to heck with it this year, and left the plant outdoors all winter. They better be dead.

Hi hautions11,
Bugs on picture shown look like aphids. They can spread through your other plants, so taking action is wise (the plants won't fight aphids off themselves).
I want to tell you that your innovative grow is intriguing to me - am just not chiming in to impose on your methods.
BER dismaying & your assesment of nutrient "lock" seems correct.
? Will you explain to us what you are considering to improve your project?

I agree those look like aphids. You can fight them a number of ways. If you want to go "biological" on them I recommend Aphidius (a tiny parasitic wasp) or Aphidoletes (a carnivorous larvae). Aphidoletes is better at larger infestations, but can be problematic if there isn't much "dirt" under the plants. For you I'd recommend a combination of a soap treatment to bring the aphid numbers down and Aphidius to finish them off.

Why do you leave the fruit on after they show signs of BER? You can't really eat them and the plant is just wasting resources trying to develop those fruit.

Just a question: Could the BER come from too much over-cropping? If the plant cannot return excess nutrients back to the roots, could they build up and look like over-fertilization? I really don't know but it sounds like a logical place to look. But then, that's jusme.

All good comments. There is no reason to leave the fruit on other then I am trying to judge if it is reducing in sverity. It is easy to see the early signs and i could just trim them but there does appear to be some better looking fruits that get farther along in the process. The big boy is definatly less affected then the roma style. Our control big boy is definately not seeing the afects.

The control plant was overcropped just as much, so I do not think that is the factor.

Aphids are horrible. I have been using soap and I am not even keeping up.

Larry

I would suggest it's a bit early to dismiss the supercropping as possible cause of the BER. I agree it's not likely, but one plant without symptoms doesn't necessarily prove the supercropping wasn't at fault. It's possible the control plant had some variable in its favor that made the difference.

Of course it's more likely there was some other minor variable that pushed things against the plants with BER.

For the aphids I'd say either go biological or get out the big guns. Hardcore pesticides aren't great, but sometimes it's better than a total loss.

Oh, and leaving the fruit on can make the BER persist. Each of those fruits represents a major future investment of plant resources. If there isn't enough to go around (a calcium shortage causing BER) the more fruit they're trying to grow the more thinly it's spread and the worse the problem is likely to get.

I'd advise removing anything with even a hint of BER. Force the plant to redirect it's resources to areas that aren't already lost causes. It may be time to look for a superior source for nutrition. I've been using Advanced Nutrients for awhile now without trouble. It might work better for you as well.

Everything points to overstressed plants. The Toms look over watered too boot,

Stress is TOO much or NOT enough of light: water :nutrients.
Its really that simple.
The aphids do not cause the leaf mottling on your peppers.

It's all GOOD ideas..but I think in the end you have too much of a mis-mash of methods going on and you are diluting the benefits of any ONE method and getting all the challenges of ALL the methods.
I'd also say as far as feeding... too much "n" and not enough P and K. All the green but mebbe not enough roots to support all that green.
Mebbe also wrong type of fert for growing medium. With the hydro set up I would imagine you'd have to have a slow steady constant feed to allow it to be absorbed and not just washed away. Isn't that way hydro medium is basically fortified water
Just thoughts.. a A for effort tho!

Very interesting. I am beginning experimenting with this supercropping technique. I hope to feedback results. Thank you.

Here is a link that might be useful: http://www.triond.com/

This has all been so interesting! Does anyone have innovations for the upside-down tomato bags that are now on the market I recently started 2 (outdoors) with hopes of moving them into a greenhouse when it gets cold and because I have very limited full sun area.Maybe I'll supercrop one to see the difference in yield.

ceilifinnigan