Sun Gold is an indeterminate cherry tomato variety, yielding a large harvest of orange, sweet tomatoes. In this example, the plant is grown in a 5-gallon bucket. As I discovered, the plant will need much more than just 5 gallons of fluid, requiring me to add fluid to the bucket about every 2 days in the hot summer weather. I would not recommend growing a large tomato plant this way, since it was too much work. However, the plant did just fine, and yielded plenty of tasty tomatoes. In the future, it would be better to either (1) grow the plant in a much larger container, or (2) connect the small 5-gallon bucket to a much larger reservoir, and use a float valve to automatically refill the bucket as the fluid gets low.
Jun 27, 2014 = Day 0. Cutting taken from another Sun Gold plant. All but a few leaves were removed from the cutting, and the cutting was placed in a rockwool cube, moistened with dilute fertilizer.
Jul 12 = Day 15. Roots were emerging from the rockwool, so the plant was installed in a 5-gallon bucket outside. Hydroponic solution composed of 5 gal tap water, 10 g MasterBlend 4-18-38, 10 g calcium nitrate, 5 g magnesium sulfate, 1 mL Dyna-Gro Pro-TeKt, 2.8 mL pH Down. N-P-K (in ppm): 103-41-168. pH = 6.5.
Aug 11 = Day 45. Plant is over 2-feet tall, and about 75% of the hydroponic fluid has been used. Began adding 1 gallon of fresh hydroponic fluid every 2 days or so (never more than 1 gallon at a time, to avoid drowning the roots).
Sep 1 = Day 66. Began harvesting ripe tomatoes.
Throughout September, continued to harvest plenty of ripe tomatoes. Around Oct. 1, production started to decrease. At this point the plant was over 7-feet tall, and looked healthy, with lots of new growth. There were many flowers present, but no fruit was setting. Perhaps it was getting too cold at night, or the number of hours of sunlight was too little. The plant was discarded in mid-Oct.
Total fluid usage = 24.5 gallons.
Bucket Hydroponics 
Did you have any issues with mosquitoes because of the standing water?
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I did not have any issues with mosquitos, but I live in Southern California, and the bugs are not too bad here. I used a tight fitting lid on top of my bucket as well, so the only access point for mosquitos to get into the water would be right near the plant stem.
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All the information you have on your website has been super helpful and inspiring. We live in Austin, TX and my son is working on his gardening merit badge for Scouts. We are using all your information and trying a go at it starting next week with the seedlings. It will be an awesome experiment!
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I’m so glad to hear that you are getting some useful information from the website! I hope your son’s project goes well!
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Thanks for such a detailed post. Since it has been several years since you posted this, have you continued doing this, but with a determinate tomato plant instead? Did it use less fertilizer? Any advice on what you would do differently? I would like to grow tomatoes indoors using your system and a 5 gallon bucket instead with grow light etc. I saw where you can trim the indeterminate heavily to keep them to size and help them produce more.
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Hi Jennifer! Yes I did grow determinate varieties, the Fantastico variety was the best one, there is a post on the site about it. The plant stayed small and was a big producer of tomatoes. If you want to grow in a 5-gallon bucket, keep in mind that you will have to be constantly adding new fluid, since these tomatoes are thirsty! I used 32-gallon buckets for this reason and I still had to add fluid, since the plants would usually use more than 50 gallons throughout the season. I did not do anything different regarding fertilizers, all the tomatoes got the same blend. It has been a few years since I grew any plants hydroponically, but I tried to document all my thoughts and data on the blogposts, so hopefully they will be useful. Good luck with your tomatoes!
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