Growing Hydroponic Tomatoes: A South African Grower's Course
A practical course on growing tomatoes hydroponically in South Africa: choosing cultivars and systems, managing heat, water and nutrients, irrigation, trellising, pests and harvest. Ground-based gullies on coir provide the worked example throughout.
Reading-based course · about 18 hours 37 minutes
Serious home growers and small commercial growers (300 to 1 200 m²) in South Africa
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Course outline
1. Hydroponic tomatoes: the big picture5 lessons
- How to use this course, and what a good crop looks like
- Soil versus hydroponics: what actually changes for a tomato
- The South African growing environment: heat, high light, hard water
- Planning a crop: crop length, start dates and the season calendar
- The grower's toolkit: meters, a drain tray, a notebook and a routine
2. How a tomato plant works7 lessons
- Anatomy of a tomato plant: stem, leaves, trusses and roots
- Determinate, semi-determinate and indeterminate growth
- Vegetative versus generative: reading the balance of the plant
- Flowering, pollination and fruit set
- Light: daily light integral and what the "1% rule" really says
- Temperature: day, night and why the 24-hour average matters most
- Development rate: a truss a week, and flower to ripe fruit
3. Tomato types and cultivars7 lessons
- The tomato types: beefsteak, round, truss, plum, cherry, cocktail
- Heirloom tomatoes in a hydroponic system: what to expect
- Reading a seed catalogue: resistance codes, HR and IR, and the two race-numbering systems
- Tunnel cultivars sold in South Africa (and the open-field ones to avoid)
- The viruses that shape cultivar choice: whitefly leaf-curl viruses (ToCSV), TSWV, ToBRFV
- Grafting and rootstocks: when it is worth it
- Choosing your cultivar: a worksheet
4. Structures and climate7 lessons
- Tunnel, multispan or shade net for tomatoes
- Heat: the real South African problem, and why fruit set fails earlier than you think
- Humidity and VPD in plain language
- Ventilation: sides, roof vents and fans
- Shade nets and whitewash: the Pretoria trial where 18% white net beat full sun
- Wet walls, fans and misting: where they work and where they do not
- Cold nights, frost and why CO₂ enrichment does not suit a vented tunnel
5. Hydroponic systems for tomatoes7 lessons
- Open (run-to-waste) and closed (recirculating) systems
- The gully system: how it works and why it suits tomatoes
- Laying out a gully tunnel: rows, aisles, slope, drainage and the return line
- Bags and pots: South Africa's sawdust bag tradition
- Dutch buckets
- NFT and water culture: why they are a poor fit for tomatoes
- Choosing a system: a decision guide by size, water and management time
6. Growing media7 lessons
- What substrate properties mean: air space, water holding, CEC
- Coir: one word, many products, and how to buy it by specification
- Preparing coir slabs: washing, buffering and wetting up
- Rockwool (stone wool)
- Sawdust, pine bark, perlite and sand
- How much substrate a plant needs
- Between crops: reuse, cleaning and disposal
7. Water and nutrition9 lessons
- Test your water before anything else
- South African water problems: salinity, boron, chloramine and hard water
- Bicarbonate and acid: how much to add, and handling acid safely
- What a tomato needs: the major and minor nutrients
- The tomato recipe: the Wageningen standard explained
- Mixing A and B stock tanks: a fully worked example (clean water and hard water)
- Ready-mixed fertilisers and their limits
- EC and pH by growth stage, and the units trap (mS/m, mS/cm, µS/cm and ppm)
- Deficiencies, toxicities and blossom end rot
8. Irrigation management7 lessons
- How much water a tomato uses, by season
- Drippers, filtration and checking uniformity
- Shot size, and the first and last irrigation of the day
- Drain percentage: setting up and reading a drain tray
- Drain EC and pH: what the root zone is telling you
- Timer schedules for growers without a climate computer (summer, mild, winter, just planted)
- Steering the crop with water, and planning water storage
9. Propagation and planting6 lessons
10. Trellising and crop work10 lessons
- Trellising options at a glance
- High wire, lower and lean
- The V-system and fixed twine for lower tunnels
- Determinate types: Florida weave and staking
- Crop load: what a full crop does to your structure
- Side-shooting and clipping
- De-leafing and truss pruning (and why leaf stubs cause Botrytis)
- Pollination without bumblebees
- Measuring the crop: weekly plant registration
- Topping, ending the crop, and the weekly crop-work routine
11. Pests, diseases and disorders9 lessons
- Integrated pest management: exclusion, scouting, records, and using registered chemicals legally (Act 36)
- Tuta absoluta
- Whitefly and the leaf-curl viruses
- Red spider mite and tomato russet mite
- Thrips, aphids, bollworm and leafminer
- Root diseases in coir: Pythium and Fusarium
- Botrytis, leaf mould, powdery mildew and the blights
- Bacterial diseases, viruses and a hygiene protocol
- Physiological disorders: cracking, blotchy ripening, catfacing and the rest
12. Harvest, quality and troubleshooting7 lessons
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