The Tropical Fruit Forum

Hi all, I've been documenting this on one of the Plinia groups on facebook but decided to start to post to its own thread here as well. I was inspired to do this as one of my friend's had attempted this with a bit more neglect which eventually led to his plant dying, as well as seeing @skhan attempt (https://tropicalfruitforum.com/index.php?topic=25450.msg401842) this as well.

About a year ago I decided to take two red hybrid jaboticaba seedlings ~3 months old from seed and throw them into my aerogarden, in short, one seedling (the one that was originally smaller) showed new roots in 3 weeks while the other basically froze with no new root growth for months on end until I finally decided to throw it out.

The result of that is what you see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qmmzLQBuHI

Additionally, to provide some more details/data, I've compiled an image album showing some update pictures from beginning to nearly current day: https://imgur.com/a/CiQ37HF

Few things to add on:

• growth speeds could've been quicker, at first I was extremely conservative and tapering up light and nutrients, I also have given the plant a few haircuts, some quite large..
• dwc from the beginning would've likely been superior to aerogarden, the transition from the aerogarden to dwc showed some shock
• I did deal with burnt tips at first while experimenting with different nutrient blends
• I did deal with algae build-up in the first few months using DWC due to higher reservoir temps, etc this has mainly been mitigated by using Hydroguard
• future plans are undecided, could be solar powered outdoor DWC or a transition to soil, I would like to fruit it in DWC but based on the initial 'runty' genetics I suspect it might take awhile, maybe I'll graft fruiting scions to it..
• plant would be more robust if there was some humidity control/airflow in my tent, I need to run a fan to at-least strengthen some branches..

Nutrients I've tried/used:

* AeroGarden Liquid Nutrients - (4-3-6) not bad but price..
* General Hydroponics MaxiGro - (10-5-14) too much calcium for me
* FoxFarm Grow Big (Hydroponic version) - (3-2-6) bad idea for DWC, aerating organic nutes turns into compost tea and makes the roots look very sketchy
* Dyna-Gro Grow - (7-9-5) currently using this @ 5mL/gal

Supplemental nutrients: Botanicare Hydroguard @ 1-3mL/gal

Setup

• 5 gallon food-grade safe black bucket from home depot
• two airstones
• small pump + tubing
• SF1000 (2020 edition) @ 16/8 light schedule

Because I rarely top-off or add extra nutrients, every 1-3 months I will do a water change where I completely dump the reservoir and add fresh water + nutrients + supplemental nutrients. Sometimes the plant goes into a light shock lasting 1 week where the foliage will appear a bit thin and droopy but bounces back.

Shout-out to Simon for convincing me to lower my PPM/nutrients, funny, when I started this project I was extremely conservative, then I went off the rails and stunted the plant..

Feel free to ask any questions, I know this may seem tedious but its been an enjoyable experience so far and I hope some of my zone pushing friends will attempt similar experiments - ideally with an even faster fruiting variety such as Scarlet.