[Mike Nolan]

We had tacos, using up more of the hydroponic tomatoes. Kinda fun to have fresh flavorful tomatoes in April.

[Mike Nolan]

Not only is it closer but our son has a close friend in Troy NY, so she would have someone in town she knows.

RPI has a pretty good reputation in the sciences, too. This was probably her second choice after MIT, which didn't accept her. (There were already several students from her HS who were accepted by MIT, so she might have run into a geographical balance issue and just missed the cut.)

[Mike Nolan]

So far about 20 of the tomatoes have sprouted.

I put in about 60 leek plants today.

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[Mike Nolan]

We had tomato and salami sandwiches and a salad (with more tomatoes).

[Mike Nolan]

We took a slice of the meat loaf, put some of the hydroponic tomatoes on them and covered that with some cheddar cheese. Very tasty.

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[Mike Nolan]

We're definitely having something with tomatoes tonight, because I just picked another 2 pounds or so of them. I got some Genoa salami, so salami and tomato sandwiches may be on the menu, plus a salad with more tomatoes.

[Mike Nolan]

We're having left over pizza for supper

[Mike Nolan]

I talked to one of the plant professors at Nebraska-Lincoln today (he did his PhD on tomatoes), he says I probably need to add potassium to my nutrient mix, as it is vital in the transfer of sugars to the fruit. Insufficient light may be a contributing factor as well.

I think the plants probably had too much nitrogen during the vegetative state, that causes them to get leggy, with overly long internodes. I will be switching to a different fertilizer mix for the next iteration of the tomato hydroponic garden and I think I'll probably reconfigure the lights as well.

But the first cycle was intended to be a learning process for me, that I'm getting some good tasting tomatoes, even if a bit small, is encouraging.

[Mike Nolan]

BLT's tonight, the tomatoes were small and that made the sandwiches a bit tricky to hold, but they were quite good.

[Mike Nolan]

They're small but tasty, we had BLT's for supper tonight.

[Mike Nolan]

We had big salads using up some of the rotisserie chicken and eye of round, with a big handful of cut up tomatoes.

[Mike Nolan]

Today's tomato harvest. The thing about growing determinants is that a lot of them tend to ripen all at once.

They're all kind of small, not sure if that's due to the varieties grown or something to do with hydroponics. Defiant is supposed to produce 8 ounce fruits, I think Better Bush is supposed to produce around 5-6 ounce fruits, most of these are 2 ounces or less.

We may have to have BLT's this week to see how they are that way.

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[Mike Nolan]

I started seeds for 12 different varieties of tomatoes, (6 of them that I have not grown before) and 2 varieties of eggplant (purple and white) under the grow lights today.

The 12 tomato varieties are:
Celebration (New)
Super Sauce (New)
Delicious (New)
Purple (New)
Estiva (New)
Celebrity
4th of July
Defiant (New for outdoors but I have two growing in the hydroponic garden)
Amish Paste
Italian Roma (New)
Italian Heirloom
Porter

The Purple one is one my older son found and gave me for Christmas, I don't know if he's grown it in his garden or not. (But purple and white are Northwestern's colors.)

[Mike Nolan]

We had tomato soup and fried cheese sandwiches on the honey wheat bread I baked last night.

[Mike Nolan]

I'm baking a pizza for supper and will bake two loaves of honey wheat bread later this evening.

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