Kratky using comfrey leaves and epson salt as nutrient.

Using only comfrey leaves,   and composted wood chips and epson salt,  with no nutrient this Kratky grown tomato is impressive, tomatoes are on.      I have added more epson salt and I decided to move the plant under a leak in my aquaponics system,  I feel encouraged enough to do this again.


I have also found that on my rain barrel by accident a couple of seeds started growing out of the cover of my rain barrel with oak leaves.     I think I will be adding more oak leaves to this setup.

Also I may add air just to see the difference bubbled air to the plant makes.

Your rain barrel is doing a Kratky!
Cool design,  for filtering out debris BTW.

The leaf with the trail in it has insect damage. Remove that leaf quickly!

I once had a beefsteak tomato plant near my window (about 3 feet from it).
My window A/C dripped water about 3 feet from the plant all summer.
Had nearly softball sized tomatoes that year!

The hotter it got the more it ran and the more water it dripped.
EXACTLY what that plant wanted!

About air - look up aeroponics (spelling?)

Also, electricity used adds up. Be sure the value of what you get vs what you spend on everything including running that pump is more than the cost.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2090123212000677

FYI: comfrey has been known to be a 'compost activator' as well as a medicinal plant.

William Bronson wrote:Your rain barrel is doing a Kratky!
Cool design,  for filtering out debris BTW.

Actually more of an aquaponics / Kratky as there are about 50 fish in the 1000 gal tank behind this rain barrel.


This barrel is setup as a radial flow filter so the dripping at the bottom is what is filtered out from the fish.


This has produced well for me so I will continue this setup.   As I love simple, low maitence setups.

Kai Walker wrote:The leaf with the trail in it has insect damage. Remove that leaf quickly!

I once had a beefsteak tomato plant near my window (about 3 feet from it).
My window A/C dripped water about 3 feet from the plant all summer.
Had nearly softball sized tomatoes that year!

The hotter it got the more it ran and the more water it dripped.
EXACTLY what that plant wanted!

Yep, but it does not mater, there are thousands more leaf minner moths behind this one.      I have many tomatoes and I have changed my strategy from fight the bugs to,  feed the bugs and take what is left.      I used to spend so much time fighting the bugs that I did not have time to harvest, or plant.

Now I just keep planting things that the bugs leave alone, and I protect with bug netting the things they don't, or grow them inside.

I have several plants the bugs just leave alone and give me great produce.

Oh! Oh, I posted my question and then this popped up as one of the linked posts.

How is this doing? It's a lot what I'm doing--modified Kratky, with ash, eggshell and urine for nutrients, and a little bit of epsom salt when I found there was a serious nutrient deficiency. I unfortunately don't have enough comfrey to add that in yet, but I may try it next year. Are you doing anything to the comfrey, or just putting it in?

Lauren Ritz wrote:Oh! Oh, I posted my question and then this popped up as one of the linked posts.

How is this doing? It's a lot what I'm doing--modified Kratky, with ash, eggshell and urine for nutrients, and a little bit of epsom salt when I found there was a serious nutrient deficiency. I unfortunately don't have enough comfrey to add that in yet, but I may try it next year. Are you doing anything to the comfrey, or just putting it in?

It is most scary to find someone who thinks like you :-)


I have been running a standard system  inside and have run into root rot inside, and my system outside.      I have not checked the roots on the comfrey setup.    Nor have I changed the water other than putting it under the  auqaponic setup.      

In my research of how to kick root rot it seems that most people use hydrogen peroxide to fix the root rot.     I have also read of some having success with cumin oil.


So yes the tomato plant grew produced tomato but not as well as the one in the soil which I put cut up pumpkins around, then put rotted wood on top of that.


So still room for improvement but progress.

Mart Hale wrote:Using only comfrey leaves,   and composted wood chips and epson salt,  with no nutrient this Kratky grown tomato is impressive, tomatoes are on.      I have added more epson salt and I decided to move the plant under a leak in my aquaponics system,  I feel encouraged enough to do this again.


I have also found that on my rain barrel by accident a couple of seeds started growing out of the cover of my rain barrel with oak leaves.     I think I will be adding more oak leaves to this setup.

Also I may add air just to see the difference bubbled air to the plant makes.

I've been thinking about trying some of the JADAM fertilizers. The JLF liquid fertilizer is supposed to be best using comfrey, but can use grass or weeds. They say it has most of what your plants need in the garden. I just wonder if it would work for hydrponics, though I would try it outside first since JLF liquid fertilizer smells like manure. I want to try a kratky experiment using JLF liquid fertilizer, epsom salt and the egg shell and vinegar solution (1 part crushed and charred egg shells with 10 parts vinegar - takes about a week or two for the bubbles to stop).

I just started using JADAM in my soil garden this year. Not sure if I'm doing it right, but it's hard to tell anything since we've had quite a bit of drought this year and that's definitely having a negative effect on my plants.

Donald Bowers wrote:

Mart Hale wrote:Using only comfrey leaves,   and composted wood chips and epson salt,  with no nutrient this Kratky grown tomato is impressive, tomatoes are on.      I have added more epson salt and I decided to move the plant under a leak in my aquaponics system,  I feel encouraged enough to do this again.


I have also found that on my rain barrel by accident a couple of seeds started growing out of the cover of my rain barrel with oak leaves.     I think I will be adding more oak leaves to this setup.

Also I may add air just to see the difference bubbled air to the plant makes.

I've been thinking about trying some of the JADAM fertilizers. The JLF liquid fertilizer is supposed to be best using comfrey, but can use grass or weeds. They say it has most of what your plants need in the garden. I just wonder if it would work for hydrponics, though I would try it outside first since JLF liquid fertilizer smells like manure. I want to try a kratky experiment using JLF liquid fertilizer, epsom salt and the egg shell and vinegar solution (1 part crushed and charred egg shells with 10 parts vinegar - takes about a week or two for the bubbles to stop).

I just started using JADAM in my soil garden this year. Not sure if I'm doing it right, but it's hard to tell anything since we've had quite a bit of drought this year and that's definitely having a negative effect on my plants.

I have been doing a varient of JADAM using David the Good's swamp water.        This year I have tried JMS one time but have not been consistent with it.

The Swamp water seems to work very well,    I see good results with my bananas.        I want  to add sea salt and cooked sweet potato to my Korean Natural farming to see if it enhances the fertilizer.