I hope to start my new batch of tomatoes Wednesday or Thursday. My soaker hose, which will play the role of an airstone, is due to arrive Tuesday. I will have maybe a dozen or so plants large enough to move from their containers into buckets, then into the GH.
I suppose that if I really want to be serious about this - and I do as I want to start selling tomatoes commercially - I need to put AJ to shame with my record keeping. When transplanted, days to the first ripe fruit, amount (in pounds) harvested from each plant, Date of Death or at least when it stops being productive, type of fertilizer used, how long it takes from the time I sow the seeds until the plant is ready to transplant (it will about five weeks for this first group).
As stated, my goal is to harvest 100 pounds of maters per week once the plants and the cycle really starts. I figure that I'll have about 42 plants producing at the same time. In my garden, I have what amounts to about 54 and they have produced 650 pounds in five weeks. Some of them, a couple of Roma, beefsteak and Riesentraube have really, really brought the average down. Supposedly, tomatoes in hydroponics are going to do significantly better than dirt toms, plus I will have somewhat of a controlled environment.
This should be fun!
Mike