Lots of flowers, no fruit

[Hank Paloci]

This seems to be a well-covered topic, and maybe I'm asking for too much too soon, but I'm wondering if there is anything else I can do to get my tomatoes and cukes to fruit. I'm getting lots of flowers.

I have tilapia, pH 6.9, NH4 0.5, NO2 0.5, NO3 80. Leaves are a rich green color, and the vines grow and grow. I recently had to clean out clogs in my piping because tomato roots had grown about 16 inches down the tube to the fish tank. I set up this system in early April and we've harvested lots of lettuce, basil, parsley, and chard so far. But my wife asks for tomatoes now and I would like to deliver. My leaf growth is impressive -- exceeded my expectations -- but no fruit.

Any input appreciated.

[Bart]

Vlad walked me through some of the numbers and what to add, I wasn't really counting on growing tomato's but it did work in the end, here's a link: http://community.theaquaponicsource.com/forum/topics/measuring-stuff

 

[Hank Paloci]

I'm in SoCal, it's been 84/62 lately, more or less. some of the non-fruiting plants are in my garage under grow lamps and some are outside on side of house. We have lots of light.

I did add about 2 tsp. Epsom salt to the tank a couple of weeks ago. I think the tomatoes responded with flowers. I didn't want to add too much because I was concerned about salinity even though tilapia can quite well handle it. At the same time, it didn't seem like a lot.

So can anyone advise as to how much Epsom salt to add to a 100g tank? And would I need to add more at some point because the plants are taking up the Mg?

[Gina Lancaster]

I use to have the same problem. Recently I read that if you want flowers and fruit that you need your nitrate levels to be low but if you want leafy green plants then they need to have a high nitrate level. My nitrate is so low now that it is almost unreadable after three years and in a five thousand gallon tank with what we've been told have a LOT of fish. We produce lots of papaya, tomatoes, eggplants, coffee, guava, lemons, etc. Our basil is nice too along with swiss chard. In all we about 100 different variety of plants but I've never done well with lettuce.

 

[Justin Schaeffer]

In my research in high tunnel vegetable production (soil grown) our tomatoes weren't setting fruit. We believed it to be a pollination issue. The temp was 32 C outside the tunnel and who knows what peak temps were inside the tunnel. It is possible that the pollen was sterilized with peak high temps.