Thanks for the welcome! And sorry for leaving some fragmentary info. I am in the lower central area of North Carolina, zone 7B. The first week in April is my normal tomato transplanting goal but since I morphed the rain shelter into a greenhouse by adding roll down side walls and end walls/w doors it can become a greenhouse in the winter or become a wind barrier during heavy rain storms in the summer so I can transplant maters earlier than normal, I started Dwarf tomato seedlings indoors on Jan 24th and transplanted them on March 8th this year. And for the growing medium in the hydroponic dutch buckets I use 60% perlite mixed with 30% coco coir and 10% vermiculite. And BTW don't forget to buffer your coco coir (with Cal Mag or Coco charge) if you use Coco coir! Otherwise it will leach the Calcium and Magnesium from your fertilizer and your plants will suffer terribly.
I do still grow a small remnant crop of indeterminant tomatoes (Sun Gold, Sweet 100 cherry tomatoes, 1 or 2 Big Beef and Cherokee Carbon) every year and I also grow just a few experimental indeterminate varieties to test, This year the tests were Brandy Boy and Tazmanian chocolate (neither one of those 2 were impressive). This summer the heat, pests and diseases were much worse on indeterminate plants (except Cherokee Carbon) than on the dwarfs that were grown hydroponically, where the right nutrients are always available, in Dutch buckets under the rain shelter & under 30% shade cloth. Pruning, rototilling and weeding are not my favorite summer activities so for me outdoor hydroponics is the top choice for growing maters, and someday I'll probably only grow the Dwarf that is early, medium Large and consistently the best tasting of them all , namely Rosella Purple which I cant say enough about.
