Hydroponic tomatoes to some might seem like a new invention, but all that a hydroponically grown tomato is is a tomato that is grown using water, nutrients, light, and air. Now my main experience with hydroponic tomatoes was done using my Aerogarden system which is a hydroponic system in that it does not use soil so the mess that you have to worry about is slim to none unless you are like my husband and really sloppy with the watering can! Here is what I found and my adventure while I was growing my hydroponic tomatoes using my Aerogarden.
The first thing that I found while growing my hydroponic tomatoes is that for some reason they sprouted much faster than I have ever seen a regular tomato grow. However, with the hydroponic tomato I would think that it is because of the constant supply of water, nutrients, and light. Which is what all plants need to grow, but with the hydroponic system you are able to control exactly how much they get of each one of these items. So the quick sprouting of my hydroponic tomato plants really excited me because my winter stock of tomatoes was running low as the last of my fresh garden picked tomatoes were starting to go bad.
So after waiting a couple of weeks my hydroponically grown tomatoes were high enough that I had to move my lights up so they wouldn’t get burnt and I also had to support them otherwise they would fall over. Now with hydroponically grown tomato plants supporting them is a little bit different compared to your other normally grown tomatoes in that you are not going to be able to use a tomato cage because you do not have dirt for the cage to go into. So with the hydroponically grown tomatoes you are going to have to use some type of rope or plastic wire to support them with. Whatever you do end up using on your hydroponically grown tomatoes will be vastly different than what you use outside and you will want to make sure the material will not cut into your tomato plants.
Now a little over a month and a half after the first sprouts appeared in my hydroponically grown tomatoes I started to enjoy waking up each morning and seeing little buds appearing to be pollinated. Now I did not do any hand pollinating which might have helped my production, but with the hydroponically grown tomatoes inside of my house without the benefit of bees to pollinate I would estimate I got a seventy five percent pollination which was a little bit lower than what I got with my outside tomatoes, but still enough to keep me in tomato heaven until the following Spring.
Some of you might be asking though since they are grown without the aid of dirt does the hydroponic tomato taste any different than your soil grown tomato. I would have to say that between the two of them I could not taste any difference between the two types of tomatoes. Now the one thing that I do have to say though is that I only grew the small cherry tomatoes hydroponically, but that is all that I needed to suit my needs at that time. So your experiences can vary greatly because you might be growing larger tomatoes. So I would have to say that for all of my experiences with hydroponically grown tomatoes I would definitely grow them again and actually plan on doing just that this winter to provide me with an excellent source of fresh tomatoes all year round.
