I’m just re-reading the brutal first year thread and realise that you are doing amazing things with tomatoes. Wow.
And Kratky too. I experimented with Kratky for a while and didn’t have much success with it.
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There’s a learning curve to Kratky hydroponics. The system itself is very simple, but maintaining it can get complicated.
Water levels are my downfall.
I think my containers were too small - pasta sauce jars - and I struggled with what to use as a feed. I wanted to avoid chemical fertilisers so I tried liquid seaweed, but the plants were quite puny and didn’t do much. I was never quite clear on which plants were suitable. Even using a big bucket didn’t seem to work, so I gave up.
Do other people at the allotment grow tomatoes outside? And, with any success? Potentially at some stage I could send you some seeds to try, but might have to do a bit more breeding first. Welcome to message me early next year to remind me, before the time to start seedlings, in case I have anything by then that I think might be interesting to try.
Yes, I grow tomatoes, indoors (no greenhouse) and outdoors, trying right now to breed neglectable tomatoes for the UK climate. So it could be interesting to have some of the results tried up your way, where the conditions are harder! Also, regarding the US, whereas there are people with really cold winters there, which make their US climate zone seem ‘very difficult’, the US zones are defined by winter temperatures, which is rather irrelevant for the actual growing season! It seems most of them over there have way more sunshine and often way more heat, than we get. So we really need ones that can deal with our lack of sunshine, and wet conditions. Some of the Siberian breeding is probably quite useful for some of that. Anyway I’m trying to mix things up a bit, with wild genetics. Let’s hope something good comes of it!
Regarding Kratky, I’m doing that indoors with LED lights. I have a couple outdoors in Kratky but I don’t have that sorted out yet, just testing the waters with that (metaphorically I mean). My buckets are food safe and black, to stop algae, but I think might be having overheating issues when the sun is strong due to the black. Buried one, will see how it goes. But I am only using Kratky to speed the initial breeding. Outdoor soil will be essential for me when it comes to selecting diverse F2 etc.
Yeah, especially for tiny containers! I have so many plants in beer cans! Critical refill emergencies daily. But it has enabled me to do a lot in a small space quickly. Plus it was a really cheap solution!
I am not aware of it being possible without chemical fertilisers. Otherwise presumably you just get a stinking fermenting mess, if you attempt ‘organic’. I use Dyna-Gro ‘Grow’ and then switch to their ‘Bloom’ when fruiting. I only use it because the guy who inspired me recommends it as the best he knows, and he’s in the US. There are probably cheaper local products but I just wanted to use something I knew to be very good. And since it only takes about 5ml of it per 5 litres of water, it actually works out really cheap, for what I’m doing.
I did experiment with a sort of hybrid Kratky system with soil in a top section and then roots going down into a stinky mess at the bottom. I was working on the assumption that feeder roots could be at the top in the soil and drinking roots at the bottom. It was interesting, and worms hung out on the roots of the plants, and I did get a few potatoes once, but nothing grew very big,
I would definitely be up for trialing some of your seeds up here.
It is currently about 12 degrees centigrade and it feels like autumn already. Everything has just stopped growing, but the tomatoes I have outside seem ok, some are just thinking about flowering, one has some small green fruits. It’s supposed to warm up later in the week, and the first frost here isn’t until nearly the end of October, so I hope that fruit will ripen.
Night time temperatures are up to around 9 or 10 degrees C, which seems to keep the tomatoes alive, it’s when it drops to 2 degrees or so that they seem to die.
I have also just been told that I have access to some ‘wild’ growing space in a community orchard, so if you would like a really tough trial I could try planting some of your seeds there. It’s a sunny, sheltered orchard with a lot of hog weed and grass. I’m planning on mulching around the trees over the late summer and autumn and then planting into that in the spring. I won’t have any inputs except for some cut weeds from the site itself, so I’m looking forward to trying to grow in that.
I’m trialling this method around four trees, two inside a deer fence and two outside.
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There are some trials being done. I use ash, eggshell and urine as the primary nutrients, with a penny, a nickle, a dime and an old rusty nail in each tank for micronutrients. An almond shell ferment for phosphorus, but the necessary amounts are so tiny as to be ridiculous. The main deficiency appears to be sulfur, so I’m working on natural sulfur additive. Work in progress.
Others have worked with variations of compost tea, split systems, hybrid systems, etc.
Interesting. I guess we could also question the meaning of ‘organic’ and ‘natural’. Making ash is a way of refining chemicals from organic matter. Egg shell could be considered inorganic also. But I can relate to the idea of wanting to be ‘more natural’, ‘less refined’.
Using pee interests me. I also considered this in the context of pure or hybrid Galapagos species. I read a study growing them in sea water, I think they used varied dilutions, I can’t remember if pure sea water was successful or not. It did make me wonder if using say, 50% water 50% pee or something like that, might work. Though I am really only interested in hydro for initial breeding, then going into natural soil and hopefully needing to even not use compost. I want them to be strong like weeds. Also I don’t want my home to smell like decaying pee. How is yours going in that regard?
If I were in a place with severe water issues like a desert, I would be much more interested in this direction though, hyrdo using readily available ingredients.
The amounts needed are very small. I diluted maybe a cup of of urine about 5 to 1 and split it between several 5 gallon buckets. I only did this a few times per season. Phosphorus I ignored until I wanted something to bloom or fruit (until this point there’s plenty in the urine itself) and used only a tiny amount (just the tip of a standard medication syringe, below the measurements) for that same 5 gallon bucket. Any more, and I ended up with an algae bloom that killed the plants.
I am still working out the details. This is an ongoing project. My goal was to be able to do hydroponics with inputs I could source from my property. I don’t see hydroponics as a long term solution.
I’d love to hear continued updates on how that goes!
Also I wonder if the results would differ if you left the pee to become old for a few months, before using it. I heard people do that for the garden.
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I have no desire to keep urine around even for a day.
One thing I quickly learned was that if the nutrient levels were too high the roots stopped growing entirely and never recovered.
I’ve used Kratky for years, without buying any products. I’ve successfully grown tomatoes, cucumbers, beans and others.
Take care of the nutrients and water levels, the system takes care of itself.
The advantage of Kratky is that it doesn’t need power. The disadvantage, as you said, is nutrients. I do not consider any hydroponics a long term solution, but it has its place.
If there’s a sulfur deficiency, do you think it would help to plant a garlic clove in among whatever else you’re growing? I believe you said somewhere that garlic exudes sulfur from the roots.
I am still working that part. Unfortunately, my first test I used beans and they died of sulfur toxicity. I haven’t had a chance to revisit it yet.
At this time I intend to do some variation on that.
The problem there is that most fish require oxygenated water. They tend to die in a Kratky system. I am currently doing an aquaponics test that includes fish. The hope is that the fish will provide the nutrients without additional inputs. They eat mosquitos, eat algae and so on, the plants eat what they put in the water. I am using one pump for the system, as I couldn’t get enough circulation passively.
I think you’re thinking of aquaponics, no?
I don’t know what they like best, but I made nearly 50 unique tomato crosses with no moving water (Kratky method) in my little apartment, growing 10 species and multiple accessions of each, so, it works 
I’ve also made successful interspecial pepper crosses, in beer cans. I’ve never tried any other hydroponics method but I never had any interest in it at all until I heard about Kratky - I do not want any sound, and Kratky is silent. So are my fans, I hacked computer fans and run them at low voltage. It’s all working pretty well, so far anyway!
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In my aquaponics I’m using mollies, minnows, and plecos. No eating fish until I have the kinks worked out. I have 4 IBC totes with one pump to take water from the lowest to the highest tank. From the highest water flows down by gravity.
The plecos are a form of catfish and edible, but I’m not even sure they’re in there any more. They get up to 18 inches long and prefer murky water to spawn. They also need less oxygen than most other fish.
All three kinds of fish are algae eaters, and the minnow spawn actually eat the algae that turns the water green. Mollies and minnows eat mosquito larvae.
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Wikipedia:
Hydroponics[1] is a type of horticulture and a subset of hydroculture which involves growing plants, usually crops or medicinal plants, without soil, by using water-based mineral nutrient solutions. Terrestrial or aquatic plants may grow with their roots exposed to the nutritious liquid or the roots may be mechanically supported by an inert medium such as perlite, gravel, or other substrates.[2]
Aquaponics is a food production system that couples aquaculture (raising aquatic animals such as fish, crayfish, snails or prawns in tanks) with hydroponics (cultivating plants in water) whereby the nutrient-rich aquaculture water is fed to hydroponically grown plants.[1][2]
I wanted to do the circulation entirely passive, temperature differentials between tanks in the shade and tanks in the sun. Turned out to be not enough water movement. With the single pump there’s enough water movement, and no apparent die-off when the power went out. Water continues to run for maybe half an hour.
If there’s no power I would transition to Kratky and the fish would thrive or die. One reason to focus on fish that need brackish water.
The mosquitos found the tanks on their own. The fish keep the population under control. The number of mosquitos has gone down considerably since I got the fish.
The only advantage from my POV is that I have an alternative if for some reason there’s no power and I can’t grow outside.
Other than that it’s just the challenge of being able to do something that multiple people told me was impossible–low tech hydroponics without imported chemicals.
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Pond growing seems like it would be a really good idea if you have a pond (or plans to build one to store rainwater for irrigation) on your land.
The major advantage that stands out to me is that you could try lots of edible species that love growing in water that wouldn’t do well in soil – cattails, water lilies, and lotuses, for example. And if you like eating fish, having a space to keep them as livestock would be valuable.
If I were going to do it (which I’m not planning to), I would do it to have a new microclimate to play with in order to try interesting species I couldn’t otherwise.