I need help and lots of it...
Printer-friendly versionI am not new to gardening, but this is my first attempt at aquaponics. I have beautiful lush tomatoe plants in my greenhouse, and loaded with blossoms; but i have yet to get a single tomatoe. This blossoms keep falling off, and i am at my witts end. Has anyone dealt with an aquaponic system?
Thank you for responding but that isn't the problem. The greenhouse was put up in the spring and we opted to leave the ends open to allow the air to pass through until winter comes around. I had also tried using the blossom set spay, shaking the plants often and even hand pollination but nothing worked. This is a aquaponic sytem where the plants are in growing medium (soil less) and the fish feed the plants, the plants clean the water and the cycle continues. My mint loves it, peppers are okay and i even have a good sized cantalope melon. The tomatoes .... they got issues.
I did a quick search and found the following advice on your situation:
Failure of Fruit to Set
When tomatoes bloom but fail to set any fruit it is usually due to one of several factors. These include: lack of pollination, too much nitrogen fertilizer, night temperatures either under 50 degrees or over 70 degrees, daytime temperatures over 85 degrees, extended periods of cloudy weather, irregular watering, insects such as thrips or a poor choice of varieties. While any of these factors can affect the amount of fruit set, combinations of them can be the cause of crop failure. If nothing else seems to make sense, try hand pollinating the blooms by tickling them with a soft bristled brush.
I found this at this URL: http://www.bachmans.com/tipsheets/gardening_problems/TomatoeProblemsCultEnv.cfm
I hope this can shed a little light on the situation!
I know I am way late on this, and this may not help you, but it is a good site to book mark for furture tomato troubleshooting:
I've actually spoken to some one who had a similar issue. They had a sun porch that they had converted to a greenhouse with tomatoes planted in it. The plants were big and beautiful, but had only produced one fruit and it didn't ripen.
It turned out the problem her plants were not pollinating correctly because she had no air movement in the greenhouses. Circulation fans help equalize temperature in a greenhouse and make the heating and cooling systems more efficient, but they also can help plants pollinate. It's the moving air that does it; it moves pollen around your building that would otherwise just fall to the ground.
I'm not saying this is the problem, but it may be a good place to start. Here is a link to our circulation fans, but there are tons of similar fans out there. Air movement could even be as simple as a couple box fans (even though these move much smaller volumes of air).