Hydroponics vs ground 2

Time for an update on the vegetables which I am trialling in our basic hydroponic system.

Once again, I was let down / felt great disappointment with the manufactures of seedlings.

Last year (autumn / winter 2015) I purchased some cabbage seedlings, and they grew wonderfully - only problem was is that they were cauliflower seedlings :(  This year what was labelled as cabbages turned out to be broccoli.

Broccoli not cabbages grrrrrr!

Finding this out at the end of the growing season does not please me!!  The alpacas love cabbage, and they had to go without home grown cabbage yet again.

The soil grown broccoli is still not producing
 and, 3 weeks ago, was roughly half the size
 of the ones in the hydroponic pots

What I have found with the hydroponic vs soil grown plants was that the cabbage broccoli went to seed very quickly in the hydroponic container, but, as can be seen from the pics above and below, the soil grown cabbage is performing much better.

So, cabbage broccoli won't be hydroponic-ed again.

The red cabbages I planted - as you can see
 the soil grown ones are leaps and bounds
 ahead of the hydroponic ones

The peas, on the other hand are working well.

My hydroponic peas - 3 weeks ago

4 weeks ago they looked like the image above...

The hydroponic pea plants today

 ... and today the plants are twice the size / height - at roughly 1.4 mtrs tall.

There are loads of pea pods on the
 hydroponically grown pea plants

Happily, the plants are laden with pea pods too :)

The comparison between the soil grown pea plants and those grown hydroponically?  The land grown ones were planted roughly 5 - 6 weeks before the hydroponic ones so it's not that easy to demonstrate with pics, but I reckon that the hydroponic pea plants have more pods on them.

Do I need to grow them hydroponically?

Nope - they  normally do well in the ground, but I was so excited about the hydroponic system we had set up that I wanted to grow something - anything - to trial it before the coming summer, and peas were all I had to hand at the time.

But, I am satisfied that the system is working.

I will be growing tomatoes and peppers hydroponically this coming summer - as well as in the ground.  Apart from the piquanté peppers, I do not seem to be that successful with normal red / green / yellow / orange capsicum - the plants are permanently in a state of "wilt" no matter how much water I give them, and the peppers themselves seem to be susceptible to rotting on the plant very quickly.

So again, with this experiment, let's see which produces more and which plants do better?