Lilies blooming today and a TOMATO in my skippy!

[Jonna]

There were 3 blooms from Silver Mist today so I had to take a couple pics.





In this one, Afterglow is in the background and you can see 2 other buds coming up. 


A few weeks ago I bought an indeterminate tomato (Early Girl) and put it bare root in the skippy.  I remembered reading once about people growing one hydroponically all year and I figure a skippy is just a big hydroponic tub so I thought I'd try it.  Well, there is a tomato on that vine!!! I'm so thrilled.  There are also a lot more blooms that I hope will also turn into tomatoes. 



Here you can see the whole vine at the edge of the skippy.

[miguynmkoi]

Your SilverMist is beautiful.  Nice Color!  Lucky you.

[Ruthie]

wow...those lilies are gorgeous!  I have heard of growing the tomatoes hydroponically in the veggie filters.  I might have to try that

[SueSTx]

Very pretty lilies.

I water my tomato vines out of the lily pond.

[Jennie in MT]

Jonna, your lilies are breathtaking!  And the tomato in the Skippy is a hoot! 

With such a short season, I never can get tomatoes to grow and ripen before frost comes, but this year I am thinking I will.  Mid-June I took an old coal bucket that had the bottom almost rotted out, lined the inside with landscape cloth so the potting mix did not flush out, and potted up a small tomato plant.  I set the whole works in the bowl shaped rock that forms one of my small side waterfalls.  Now that tomato is HUGE and the roots are coming out the bottom so much that I am afraid it will start blocking the water flow.  Here are some snaps I ran out and took.....

Can hardly see the rock or the coal bucket...


and the roots ARE blocking the flow!  LOL


You will have to post and tell us how your skippy tomotoes taste!  I am not a big tomato fan, but will surely have one in the falls next summer!!

[Jonna]

That tomato is really taking off.  The roots coming out the bottom are incredible!  I see blooms on it, I hope it sets fruit.  The picture I saw of the tomato vine growing hydroponically was in a house in New Mexico, high altitude and cold winters.  It was growing in the kitchen and trained all along a bank of windows that faced south.  The thing was huge, it ran around 2 sides of the room.  You could see the snow outside and there were ripening tomatoes on the vine. 

I think tomatoes really like all the water they can get but they hate their roots to get stagnate.  So, the running water of a skippy or a waterfall should be perfect. Plus all the fish poop for fertilizer 

I'm experimenting here although I may not be here to actually try any of the tomatoes as they may not ripen before we leave.  In Merida, where we're building a house, there are nematodes in the soil that make it tough to grow many kinds of tomatoes. So, I'm hoping I will figure out what they need to grow hydroponically and perhaps be able to grow something besides the ever present Roma, about all you can find in Mexico.

[maryvonne]

Very nice lilies. I still really love Afterglow. Silver Mist is pretty too.

Maryvonne

[-Greg-]

Jonna, those blooms are awesome! So if the tomatoes are working, I wonder what else would....peppers, beans, peas?

Greg