Starting An Indoor Cucumber/Tomato Garden

So I have a 600w HID light kit, a 1.2mx1.2mx2m grow tent & thought i'd grow something legal indoors.

I'm torn between cucumbers and tomatoes, they will be set up hydroponically and I figure I could have around 8 big plants in my space, would you recommend 4 of each or one over the other? I wanted to try strawberries but i've read a lot about them not producing any fruit in their first year and everbearing strains are low yielding and low quality.

I also have no clue where to get my seeds. Every online website has rediculous claims or no information on the strain, I could go down to my local garden centre but will they be inferior in any way? I really don't mind pollinating the plants myself, though 8 of the same plant would be beneficial if I did.

Edit: The picolino variety of cucumbers looks good, they are considered minis, if you know any other good strains let me know :D

 

Its not like Cannabis where, as I understand it, special strains revered and passed around. There are massive commercial breeding programs for vegetable varieties, so if you buy "Variety X" then it should be true - whether you get it cheap on eBay, or from your local garden centre.

There are several "problems" as I perceive it:

The fact that I love XXX Tomato variety doesn't mean that you will. There is heated debate on this forum each year about which varieties to grow. What we can probably can do, reliably and with consensus, is tell you which ones not to grow - like Moneymaker, Alicante and Ailsa Craig (I fail to understand how they are so popular and sell, year after year, in garden centres as anyone I know who has grown them, and others for comparison, says they are tasteless)

Next up is the type. You need an "indeterminate" variety, this will grow as a single stem (you have to take off all the side shoots which develop), and as such will grow well in a growing cabinet. A Bush type (so called "Determinate") variety would be more difficult in that sort of space.

8 plants (agree with @JWK that might not be feasible in the space) is quite a big crop. Do you like tomatoes that much? I presume growing your own, with significant cost of inputs as you are doing, to then freeze / can is a bit of a waste of time - although it makes sense to those of us with lots of space and "free" sunshine etc.

One thing you could do, although it will bump your cost up a bit, is to buy seed for several different varieties and grow one plant of each - and then see which ones you like most to grow for next year's crop.

I think you need to choose varieties that are productive. Many of us grow one or two varieties that are "awkward" - they take ages to set fruit, and we only get a few before the end of the season (although they may perform MUCH better under lights, who knows?) So personally I would avoid Beefsteak types, and some others that start cropping really late.

Suggested varieties:

Cherry type : Gardeners Delight and Sungold
Normal ones : Shirley

These are not revolutionary varieties, they are mainstream ones that many gardeners grow, but fine and with excellent flavour, and reliable year-after-year

One other thing, if you don't know what F1 is then: you cannot keep seed from F1 varieties, they are First Generation of a cross between two pure-bred parents, and their offspring won't come true. So us gardeners buy F1 seed from the shops and let the breeders do the work for us, rather than breeding our own. The varieties that are available which you can keep seed from are so called "Heritage" / open-pollinated ones. Tomatoes tend to self-pollinate, so if you keep your own seed (of heritage varieties) it is likely to come true (your cabinet is very tight though, which might cause some cross pollination, but in general that is not the case) ... but ... F1 varieties exist in the shops for the reason that they are generally superior, so worth considering them for that reason.

Cucumbers - is it worth growing them? I grow them because a) I can, b) they are expensive in the shops and c) its convenient just to go to the greenhouse to get one, but I don't think my cucumbers taste superior to shop bought ones - they are just water - so I am not sure you should be growing them as I don't think you are going to be gaining on what you can get in the shops (others may disagree?). My advice would be to grow crops which have varieties not available in Supermarkets and which have excellent flavour, particularly where fresh-picking is important to flavour - e.g. things that don't travel, and are not good if picked a bit "early" (Yeah, Strawberries that you mentioned would fit that bill)

In the shops you will be buying Tomatoe varieties that are easy for farmers to grow (e.g. high yielding and/or all fruits ripen at the same time), have a nice colour that "shoppers want", have a thick skin so they don't "bruise easily on the shop shelves" - but flavour may be bottom of the supermarket's and grower's list ... whereas you can instead grow low yielding, thin skinned, varieties with superb flavour - result!

 

Garden Pearl is a good one for hydroponics and limited space as it stays low. You`ll need to raise the light for single stem toms to prevent burning the tops.