More Hydroponics

Well I had me a little accident with my tomato in a 5 gallon bucket. I lifted that lid off that bucket so many times showing people how it worked that I broke one big limb off that dang tomato but all was not lost, I've been studying up on cloning and am trying my luck on cloning a few limbs off of that plant.

I caught me around 600 gallons of rain water from our last rain and I thought I would get my new bucket system up and running with some of that rain water.

I filled those buckets up first and checked the PH in each bucket and all looked good, that rain water came out with great PH readings so I filled up that tote and then I added the fertilizer and fired it up.

I thought I'd let it run overnight before I put anything in it. The next day I went out and checked the PH just for grins and I'm glad I did. The more in the yellow to orange the PH reading is the lower the PH is and when I checked mine it was blood red. What in the hell happened here? I grab my bottle of base for raising the PH and put some in my system,now it doesn't take a whole lot of this stuff to raise the PH of the water. I put some in the water and retested it and it did not change one little bit "what the hell" I pore some more in the water and nothing the PH is still blood red. I'm getting a little pissed off now and pore what is left in the bottle in that system. I check it again and it has come up some but not near enough and I'm out of the Base for raising the PH so off I go to the Hydroponic place and it is closed on Sundays so I stop at Pet Smart and get me a bottle of stuff that will raise the PH. I get home and start with that bottle of Base and $9.00 later and a empty bottle my PH is still to low now I'm pissed, something is not right with my system.

This is what I use to raise the PH and this to lower it

 I was told when I first started this Hydroponic stuff that rain water was the best water to use in a Hydroponic system, the lying bastards. Well it is great for Hydroponics but you do have to add something to it. It seems that rain water is missing a few trace minerals and the fertilizer will not bond to rainwater. They forgot to tell me that so that was throwing my system out of wack so I buy this stuff.

I follow the directions and in no time my PH was great. So if you are going to use rain water you might want to get some of this stuff or you will go broke trying to get your PH just right after you add the fertilizer.


My damn tote with the tomato's in it has just about outgrown that damn tote,I had to put some pieces of granite on the Net Pots to hold them down so they wouldn't fall over in the tote. The stems on these plants are huge so I don't think they will break from getting top heavy but they will tip over in the tote, I just need something to hold them in the tote. If the rocks don't work I will try some twist ties and tie them into that dang tote.

April 7th

April 2nd

March 15th

All of my tomato's have blooms and some tomato's already. I think I might cut back on the fertilizer. I put a pepper in that new bucket system and its already trying to bloom. I'll be pinching the blooms off because its way to small for peppers now.

 I hope I answered some of your questions on this stuff. I'm still learning but I'm real happy with the results. If you don't have a Hydroponic or Aquaponic business in your area you can buy all of the above stuff off of Amazon.

One other thing,once your plants are ready to start blooming you need to switch over to a Blooming fertilizer. I use this stuff.

Before I used this my blooms were falling off the plants now they are staying on the plant and forming tomato's.

I also read that if you put red Christmas balls out around the tomato's that the birds will not peck holes in the tomato's, they peck on the red balls and by the time your tomato's start turning red the birds figure that all they will get is a headache trying to peck the tomato. If I could just find something to keep the squirrels away I would be a happy camper. I tried putting a fake owl out there and the squirrels made friends with it. I tried rubber snakes and that didn't bother them, I even put mouse traps at the base of the plants and that didn't stop them.