Hydroponic Tomatoes : Factors Affecting Tomato Plant Growth

May 3, 2012 - PRLog -- Luscious, large and tasty tomatoes that add so much color to your diet contain health-enhancing components such as lycopene, which help to maintain a healthy cardiovascular system. Tomatoes can be grown excellently by hydroponic gardening. Hydroponic gardening has several benefits – you can control the fruit production, extend fruit production and also supply natural sugars and other nutrients required by the tomato plant to produce, large, luscious, juicy and tasty tomatoes.

Hydroponics enables the grower to harvest all year round. And this is absolutely great for commercial purposes. Providing fruits and vegetables that are out of season can get you great prices. The excellent range of advanced Nutrients plant growth formulas will help you cultivate wonderful tomatoes indoors or outdoors, hydroponically and in greenhouses as well.

Tomatoes can be easily grown indoors or outdoors if their specific nutritional and environmental needs are fulfilled. Tomatoes are very easy to grow hydroponically. Growers use the same nutrient and additive inputs as they would when growing tomatoes in soil. Growing indoors means growers have to provide many of the environmental and growth components provided free by outdoor growing. Hydroponics plants are most often grown in sterile root zone media that doesn’t contain any of its own nutrition, the grower has to provide adequate nutrition and maintain the proper chemistry of the nutrients water so plants are able to absorb nutrition.  

Factors affecting tomato plants:

1.   Heat - Tomatoes grow best in a range of 55-85 degrees Fahrenheit. Prolonged cold or even a short exposure to frost can kill tomato plants. Though they can handle higher temperatures. They get damaged if the temperature rises over 93 degrees Fahrenheit.
2.   Nutrients – Tomatoes require balanced nutrients designed for easy absorption and that are rich in nitrogen and other essential compounds.
3.   Light – Whether they are cultivated indoors or outdoors, tomato plants need exposure to good, strong light atleast 5 to 6 hours a day.
4.   Pollination – If tomato plants have to bear tomatoes. They must be pollinated.  Natural pollinators like insects, wind etc must be accessible to the plants or else the grower will have to arrange for artificial pollination. Artificial pollination is suited for indoor or greenhouse growing.
5.   Environmental conditions – Lot of wind, extreme heat or cold, pollution and presence of harmful insects or disease causing agents can harm tomato plants. Tomatoes need water, but they do not like being drowned. You must guard against overwatering as much as you guard against drought.

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