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I want to try an idea that has be floating around in my head for a few weeks. The main goal is growing tomatoes at little to no cost, in a smallest possible space, and not looking out of place.

my situation is I live in a condo and have only a small balcony. But I live in Florida so sunshine is not a huge problem. I think I have everything worked out except for the nutrient solution. I looked at a few online hydro shops but the selection was crazy, I have no idea what I am looking for.

I was planning on starting out with a small black plastic gallon jug (used from those massive protein shake powders from a friend of mine). Cut a hole in the lid and use some netting with perlite for the "grow basket". Then source a small aquarium airpump and air stone.

I think this would be just about the cheapest and easiest way to get started. Eventually I would probably try to modify the design and add a solar powered water pump and convert to a drip system. But I still need to know what kind of nutrients to use. Could I use some worm tea as the source of nutrients?

Thanks

this is probably a wonderful soil amendment for growing in the ground, sort of a specialized kind of manure tea. But pro-rabbit was asking about nutrients for hydro systems. That is very different. In a hydro system, you have to provide 100% of the nutrients yourself, since nothing will be provided by soil. That includes boron (B), copper (Cu), iron (Fe), chloride (Cl), manganese (Mn), molybdenum (Mo) and zinc (Zn) as well as NPK. And they have to be in soluble form to flow through the system and be taken up by water roots (which are different from the roots plants put out in soil). And they have to not interfere with the carefully maintained pH balance and to be measureable in ppm's.

That said, I really don't know anything about hydro and can't answer rabbits question, except to say in the most general way that you will need some good balanced nutrients that provide everything and you will need lots of it.

I did find this article about growing tomatoes hydroponically in FLorida (!). https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/cv216 It is technical and data-dense and talks about different nutrients for different stages of growth. If you are willing to work your way through it, it should answer your questions.

Sigh... there was a post before mine about some kind of ayurvedic soil amendment, sort of a manure tea, with cow dung, honey, etc, which I was responding to. I guess the powers that be decided the post was commercial or self-serving, though it did not appear that way to me. So the post was removed and now mne doesn't make any sense.