The Dose is the key.
The secret to success with any hydroponic system is getting the nutrient levels just right.
This is largely why most commercial hydroponics growers tend to specialise in one or two particular plant varieties; they can adjust their nutrient mix to suit that one particular plant.
We have made life a lot easier for the home gardener by finding a great all round mix which works for just about everything, by just adjusting the strength. Naturally, our customers get access to this knowledge.
The other most important factor is choosing the right plants for the climate and season, as our 'naked' system is primarily designed for outdoors -although there is absolutely no reason why you couldn't put our planters in a glass house, or even inside under lights.
After several years of trials, we have a pretty good idea of what works and what doesn't; but we are still learning, and still experimenting. One thing we have learnt is that too much nutrient is often worse than not enough; not only does less nutrient cost less, but you don't really have to panic if you're going away for a weekend. Even when your heavy feeders are coming into full fruit, less nutrient fortnightly will just slow them down; it generally won't kill them, provided of course they don't run out of water altogether.
Too much nutrient, on the other hand, does appear to be toxic.
Capsicums and Chilli's I've discovered, are particularly susceptible to over feeding. Although they don't actually die, they just look ridiculous. These are photo's of capsicums we've treated like tomatoes.
It seemed reasonable to me to group all 'fruiting vegetables' together; certainly tomatoes, cucumbers and eggplants go well together.
Clearly, I was wrong -at least at certain times of the year. In our climate zone, tomatoes appear to have a longer growing season than Capsicums.
Trying to grow veggies in the wrong season has the same effect as overfeeding. The plant tends to 'bolt'; go to seed or fruit while still immature.
This is my idea of what a Capsicum should look like.
Unlike the first 2 photo's, it was really challenging to show the fruit, the plant was so bushy. Note the red fruit at the bottom; it won't be there for much longer.
In terms of dosage, the first 2 capsicums went on to 10ml of Optimum Grow a week fairly early, and went to fruit almost immediately. The last capsicum has only ever received 10ml a fortnight, and secretly I think we may have missed a couple of changes too.
Once it was nice and leafy, we changed the nutrient to 10ml of 'Optimum Bloom', to encourage more fruit. The results were not compelling.
This one stayed on 15ml of Optimum Grow, but I suspect would have done better upright. It just didn't seem happy to us, hanging down.
As for general feeding, this is a planter on just 5ml of Optimum Grow for a fortnight.
By the way, all photo's on this website should be “clickable”, for a closer view. If you find any you can't click on, please let us know. We have placed mint in the extreme left, furthest away from the filler hole, as it will be permanent. (Revision! We do NOT recommend this any more! We suggest you place mint in the hole closest to the large filler hole. Then you can reef the mongrel stuff out, when it -inevitably- starts to take over.) All the others could be transplanted, if necessary.
These tomatoes have just been promoted to what I would call a 'lazy 10' ml; ie they could be replenished every week, but I wouldn't lose any sleep if I forgot.
This planter is also on (a very strict weekly) 10ml, but on this day it's due to be upgraded to 15ml. It won't do the lettuce any good, but it's about to bolt anyway. Dianthus are great value by the way; they flower for months and take up little room.
This is the time to move tomatoes up to 15ml a week, when they start to flower. 
It doesn't hurt to prune your tomatoes fairly strictly; remember it's fruit you're after, not a big mass of leaves. If you can trim the growth tips about 150ml (6”) long, you can pop them straight back into a planter -with only 5ml nutrient, or less- and keep your best plants going pretty much forever. I'll show you how I do cuttings a bit later on.
Tomatoes, basil, mint of course all strike very easily, as do a number of flowering plants and trees. In fact, it was taking cuttings of Hibiscus which started me on the Naked Hydroponic road.
And finally we come to the 20ml weekly maximum tomato plant. This to my mind is the perfect hydroponic tomato bush, heaps of fruit on a nice compact vine.
All these planters are in varying degrees of shade.
A northerly aspect is generally ideal, as you really want more sun in winter, and shade in the hottest days of summer, if possible.
Too much sun in the hottest months can lead to 'blossom end rot'; bad fruit on an otherwise healthy plant is quite disheartening.
I hope you find these notes on my methodology helpful, but please don't ever take anything I say as inarguable gospel; you need to assess your own situation, and make your own decisions. I'm still learnin', and as I've said, I was a bloody awful gardener to start with.
But these days, I do manage to keep the weeds in check...
P.S. (or Piss...)
About my lovely 'perfect hydroponic tomato bush'...
Pride do Goeth Before a Fall.
I have stressed on a number of occasions not to trust the plastic plant ladders with your tomato vines. This was a real 'Oh Bugger!' moment.
Naturally we are more than happy to share full details of our experiments and experience (good and bad) with our customers in our members only section. Not only videos of how we do things, but also some great discounts on nutrients for Australian customers.
