And the video has CC too. Thanks.

Hi, it's automatic cc and I saw some misspellings when I looked at it, but it seams to be about 90% correct on the spelling, so it's very impressive and you probobly get the whole picture :)

soil stands no chance.. if done right, hydroponic tomatoes can grow 300-500 percent faster than in soil, growth of 1 -2 inches per day is what i experienced using aeration in a deep water culture system in a 5 gallon bucket. not sure about other hydroponic methods as i've never tried others. things like using kelp as a foliar spray can improve growth rates even more.

only downside to hydroponic tomatoes vs soil is more maintenance.. it's manageable if you're only doing a couple plants, but a another story with dozens unless you have a properly setup system such as some green houses do.

Wow! Thanks stevie! That's super cool to know! But, like you said, for a few plants it is easy...but for many.....whole other story! That being said, I think I will go ahead and perform my own l'il experiment with a few of my poorly seedlings, and see how that goes. Thanks for the info! :D

Garden Lover as stevie said. The hydroponic worked better in the end until i accidently broked it. But in the end, the hydroponic had more sidestems with flowers on it, hence more tomatos in the end. The only reason that the soil based tomato had a bigger tomato on it, is because it had less flowers and and sidestems growing. And by having that, the plant could focus more on it's power on that one tomato while the hydroponic one focused the growthpower on all the sidestems and flowers, and the small tomato it also had.

Neat, mike_swedish_farmer!

After seeing your experiment, it has inspired me to try hydroponics for some of my next batch of plants! :D

I look forward to seeing more experiments!!

maybe this will give you some additional inspiration ;-)

left is a cutting that was pretty beat up looking.. the right is after only 25-something days with 1-2 inch fruit size forming and the plant topping the 54" cage.

nutrients were kept around 750-900ppm using a 5-15-14 fertilizer.. maxi bloom by general hydroponic works pretty good at around 1 tsp a gallon (half that for younger plants!) i highly suggest a PPM/EC meter and a PH meter. glued to the bottom of the bucket there is a 4 inch air stone with an inexpensive aquarium pump.

if you can somehow manage to give them more than 13-14 hours of sunlight, beware, RUN.. they might create an even bigger explosion leaving you disorientated. ^.^

i do suggest using a bigger container (10 gal) because they can drink a couple gallons of water per day..

Stevie;

Holy moly!!

That is SIIIICK! I love it! :D

I am truly amazed at how that plant came from that little cutting!

Now my research is ON for hydroponic growing!

Thanks for sharing that with me! :D

Happy growing!

Stevie: Really nice indeed. Air stones are really nice! And they work really good with hydroponic systems of different sorts and sizes