Hello my fellow gardening enthusiasts.

It's time for another update from my outdoor hydroponics garden. My last update was 10 days ago and just as I had forecast, the plants have begun yielding a sustainable food cycle for us this week. The first tomatoes have ripened with tons more coming in right behind them and the first cucumbers have matured as well.

First pickings with 'Better Bush' plant in the backgorund.

As always, and I'm honestly not sure why - maybe they are 'practice', the first tomatoes and cucumbers from the low end of the vines are on the small side compared to the clusters ripening on the next nodes up the plants. Nonetheless, I cannot complain with home-grown goodness of any size picked fresh from the garden.

'Tyria' cucumber measuring just over 12"

First Cucumbers

The cucumbers are a variety called "Tyria" and are both just over 12 inches in length. The other two still maturing on the vines are already at 12 inches and still growing, so they will most likely push 14-15 inches which is typical for this variety.

The vines are very healthy with very large dark green leaves measuring over 15" across. I have used vines ties to train them back and forth across the trellis to keep them compact in overall height. After crossing 4 times each, they have now reached the top of the trellis and I will allow them to grow up to the side fence lattice now. There are a dozen or so cucumbers at various stages of growth on the vines, so we'll see how many continue to mature over time.

A Single 'Better Bush' tomato plant in our hydroponic system.

First Tomatoes

The first tomatoes are from the heat-tolerant "Better Bush" variety. Two came from the organic soil container plant, and one came from the plant in the dutch bucket hydroponic system; all three weigh in at around 0.4 pounds each.

This is the first time I have placed a determinant "bush" variety of tomato in my hydroponic system. I usually grow indeterminate varieties which I keep to single stem vines to allow them to be easily dropped from the support lines as they grow during the season.

I have 1 "Better Bush" plant in the hydroponic dutch bucket that has branched out into 6 main lead stems that I have support by the overhead lines. Each of those have several clusters of tomatoes maturing as well as additional branches growing out from them. Needless to say it is very happy in the hydroponics system and growing 3X faster and larger than the one in the organic soil container.

Since their are so many stems that have been supported and clipped, there is not safe way to lower them individually if it gets too tall. It will be interesting to see how this experiment plays out over time.

'Climstar' tomato plant in dutch bucket hydroponics system.

As I mentioned in my previous posts, I have 5 different varieties of tomatoes growing in my front garden and all of them are draped in high-count clusters in various stages of maturity. In about 20 days or so we will start to into a very high yield period that I will work to maintain throughout the year.

I have successfully rooted 2 branches from the "Cherry Heart" tomatoes shown in my previous post and have those starting out in the side hydroponic rails out front as well. I also kept a bunch of seeds just in case I need to take the long way to grow more. They are very flavorful and seem to be a very high-yield variety so I want to keep them in rotation.

A don't want to use the "H" word, but if Mother Nature is kind to us this year and we don't have a repeat of last year's mess, I should be able to keep up a sustainable cycle by swapping out older plants with younger ones at overlapping times to avoid any gaps in harvestable food.

The sweet peppers are just starting to blossom and set their first fruit, so they are still a few weeks out from providing goodies for us.

I will give an update in about 10 days to show the progress.

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🌱 Happy Gardening!

Side Note: As I start to expand to other platforms, I needed to evolve my username to be more generic. You will see me start to use "PowerPics" more often and move away from "SteemPowerPics" as I need to drop the "Steem" from my name.