 Hello, hello, and welcome to Little Garden on the Prairies, and welcome to another tomato growing challenge. So I have been growing tomatoes indoors for several years, and I just love growing tomatoes and other vegetables indoors. If you've watched any of my previous videos, you'll know that I do a lot of growing using the Kratky hydroponic method. And I also now own an arrow garden, and I do, and a Hortous DWC hydroponic system. So normally I have been growing cherry tomatoes in my arrow garden and having good success with that, and usually I do Kratky for the bigger tomatoes or the dwarf type tomatoes. And I happen to have a really nice beefsteak plant going in my grow tent right now with tomatoes that are that big. So I really enjoy the larger slicing tomatoes. They do take up a little more space when you try to grow them indoors as opposed to the cherries, but these are two dwarf varieties that I've started from seed, and I want to get them set up. So I just removed two cherry tomato plants from this arrow garden. I did some previous videos on them. I did a yellow cherry and a red cherry in here, compared it to the I do system. And my good old arrow garden here came out on top. It's produced a ton of cherry tomatoes. I ate them for a good month. And the plants were pretty much done. So I cut them out, gave this a cleaning, and decided that maybe I will try one of these dwarf varieties in my arrow garden and set up the other one in one of my Kratky jars here. And we can kind of just do a little comparison to see which system works best. These aren't the exact same variety, so I mean this isn't going to be like a very scientific test, but I just want to see if the arrow garden or the Kratky method produces different results with a dwarf variety tomato. So for this growing season, I have been using this three-part blend from Holland Secrets. And it is a basic three-part blend. You can get all sorts of three-part blends of different brands, but this is the one I've been using. It's available on Amazon. I can put the link in the description below. And I also can source this out locally at different hydroponic stores or gardening stores. So that's why I've been using it. And I started using this last year and I've been using it for all of my growing this year. And I still have quite a bit left. So you don't have to spend a lot of money on your nutrients and they will go a long way. And my other secret ingredient that I've started using for all of my mixtures is the Kali magic, which adds a little bit of calcium and magnesium to the nutrient water. And I have found that that, I think, has made a big difference. I had a lot of issues last year with blossom and rot on my tomatoes. I had issues with my cucumbers just kind of blooming and dying. Once I started using this, it seemed to make a difference, I think. The other thing that I have stopped doing, and I know I have a lot of videos on this as well, is I don't worry a lot about the pH and the EC or the PPM. So I have done videos on how to test the pH and how to bring it up or down if needed. And I've researched all the different EC and PPM levels that different vegetables need to be at to produce the best. And last year I spent a lot of time testing and adjusting and changing the water and kind of struggling with keeping it at those levels that they say they should be at to get the maximum harvest off your vegetables. And as I said, I still dealt with a lot of problems of blossom and rot and just fruit not producing well on my cucumbers and peppers. So this year my method has changed and it is so much easier. So basically when I first am starting a new plant such as we are today, I mix up a four liter batch. I always use these four liter vinegar bottles because they work well. So the chart on this one has five different stages of your plant and then measurements of how much of each of these three parts you need to put in. I always just use two of them. I use early vegetative for when my plants are just being set up. So they're kind of at that seedling, you know, small stage. And then once I start drinking now in that nutrient water, they're growing, they're starting to bloom and get bigger. And they need more nutrient water added to the container. Then I go right to the bottom, which is late flower stage, and I mix up a batch at that level. So whenever the nutrient levels are getting, you know, low in my containers, I just check them every couple of days. I always have a jug of this made up. I just top everything up in my grow tent and in my arrow garden. And that's all I do. I don't worry about, you know, testing the pH and checking the EC level. I just top it up with the full strength nutrient solution and everything has been blooming and producing fruit. And I've had so many cucumbers this year. I'm very excited. So that is how I do it this year. And if you are thinking about doing cracky or using an arrow garden or similar system, I would say just, you know, follow that rule. So always just start off with that early growth stage measurements that you'll find on the back of these nutrient bottles. And then once your plant is, you know, about a month or so old and starting to really grow and bloom, that's when I just switch to the stronger nutrient solution and just keep topping it up from there. So this little five mil measuring spoon is what I've been using to do my three part nutrients. And I always just add five mils of the cowmeg into a four liter container. Even at the early stage and the late stage. It's always just one spoonful of this every time. So I have already filled up both of these containers with my nutrient solution. So when you're doing the cracky method, you want the roots to just be reaching the water and you don't want to fully submers your roots and plant in the water or it will drown. It needs to have some air. So that is how the cracky method works because there's no pump in this system. This is just a passive growing system. So there's no pump producing air in the water. So I made the mistake of starting this in a smaller net cup. Forgetting that it was going to need a bigger net cup going into my container here, but that's okay. So I'm just going to gently pull some of the roots through. And we'll surround this with some clay balls to give it stability. Hold it in place. And when you put your nutrient water in, you want it to just reach those roots just so they can start drinking that nutrient water and they will keep growing and going down towards the nutrient water. And then I will just continue to put some more of these around and it will block out all the light. Keep that LJ from coming back. And so this one is set up and ready to go. So for the one that is going to be going into the arrow garden, it is also one that I started in some rock wool. It's got lots of nice roots here. I'm just going to reuse one of these from the arrow garden and just kind of make sure the roots are coming down real good. Stick it into the container. I like to use these things here. I bought these at a local hydroponic store, but I can also share a link in the description box below to Amazon because you can buy them there. They're called cloning covers or something. So they wrap really nicely around the stem of your plant. Hold it in place. And also just keep that light from hitting the rock wool and helps keep that LJ out. So when I planted these up, I was very smart to label the net cups as to which variety was planted in each. And then I took them out to plant them up and did not take note of which one is which. So the two tomatoes that we are testing out here today are both dwarf determinant varieties that I purchased from a local company called Blazing Star Wild Flower Seed Company. They're located in Aberdeen, Saskatchewan. And all of their seeds are heirloom seeds that they have saved and collected locally. So one is called the Siberian. The other one is called dwarf wild fred. So maybe once they get growing and producing, we'll be able to figure out which one is which. Because the wild fred kind of has got a different shape, as you can see, than the Siberian, which are just more around. So at some point, we'll maybe figure out which one is which. But for now, these are all set up and ready to go. So I will be setting up the aero garden with the timer system. I will be planting another thing over here. I just haven't figured out what, but I thought there's some room and might as well try something else as well. And this one will be going into the grow tent. So we're putting this on the veggies selection for the lights, which is 16 hours of light and eight hours of dark. And she is ready to go. So we are just at eight days since I put these into their two systems here. And I just wanted to give you a quick comparison just before I upload this video. So as you can see, the one in the aero garden is maybe not quite as big as the one in the crack key method. And again, it could be because these are two different varieties, but both are looking really healthy and really taking off. So if you enjoyed watching this video, I would love to hear your comments below. Please hit that like button. And if you haven't already done so, hit subscribe so that you don't miss out on future videos coming to the channel. Thanks for watching and happy gardening.