Fertilizing Tomatoes - Some Tips on How to Fertilize Tomatoes

Once we start growing our tomatoes, we want to be sure to ensure the best yields by properly fertilizing the tomatoes. Here we have a few tips on how to fertilize tomatoes, using either traditional fertilzers or organic tomato fertilizer.

Tomatoes are fairly heavy feeders in our gardens, so the first best practice is to rotate the crops, ideally so that a given spot in the garden doesn’t have tomatoes more than once every 4 years. Understandably, this is not always practical, but rotating with a nitrogen fixing legume or other light feeder can keep the soil from being drained of nutrients, and it has the side benefit of helping to control soil borne diseases as well.

It’s always a good idea to have a soil test to see what your specific needs are, not only for the required fertilizer levels but to check and correct the soil pH as well. We will assume that you have an average soil need and recommend the average fertilzer needs.

Nitrogan, phosphorus and potassium are the three nutrients most commonly fed to plants. Most fertilizers are a combination of the three. The levels of these are listed on the fertilizer package, a three number series such as 3-0-3, or 15-10-5, presents the ratio of all three nutrients in the fertilizer. A common garden and lawn fertilizer ratio is 3-1-2 (or the equivalent of 6-2-4 or 9-3-6), which has a higher ratio of nitrogen to the others. The high nitrogen encourages leaf growth, and is good for lawns and leafy vegetables, but is too high for tomatoes. The more typical numbers for tomato fertilizers will have a 1-1-1 ratio (like a 10-10-10) or even a 5-10-10. Some recommend even higher P levels like a 5-20-10. The best choice for you will depend on the soil test.
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TOMATO TONE -from Espoma 4 LB. $6.95 Store: Yardiac.com GSC Organic Tomato Fertilizer, 1 Lb. $6.95 Store: Gardener’s Supply Company Terrific Tomato Kit $29.95 Store: Gardener’s Supply Company Garden Solutionsr Tomato Food $7.95 Store: Gurney’s Seed & Nursery Co. Accu-GrowTM Soil Test Kit $39.95 Store: Henry Fields Seed and Nursery Co. Tomato Fertilizer Spikes $5.95 Store: Gurney’s Seed & Nursery Co. Happy Frog Tomato & Vegetable Organic Fertilizer 7-4-5, 4 lb Bag: J $8.95 Store: Kalyx.com Tomato Tree $45.00 Store: Gardener’s Supply Company

Chemical based fertilizers will often have higher numbers since they are concentrated chemicals, and don’t represent the levels found in naturally occuring products. This does have the advantage of making them cheaper to apply to correct the soil levels.

These are not the only nutrients that any plant needs, but they are the primary ones. Commercial fertilizers made by chemical processing typically add none of the trace elements that might be needed, which is why many gardeners prefer to use either organic fertilizers or include the addition of compost as part of the soil prepartion. Another common approach is fertilizing tomatoes with rotted manure.

The most common example of a trace element problem in tomatoes is blossom end rot. It appears as a depressed brownish, rather dry rot the size of a dime to a half dollar on the blossom end of the fruit. Blossom end rot is caused by a calcium deficiency and is made worse with wide wide variations in soil moisture levels.

Prepare the soil by working in the amount recommended by the label (the higher number fertilizers will likely take about 1 lb per 100 square feet, where the lower organics might need 2 or more lbs per 100 square feet). Work it into the top 6 inches of the soil. Be careful not to add more than recommended, especially with chemical fertilizers as they can “burn” the crops as they break down quickly in the soil and will cause an imbalance that actually damages the tomato plants.

During the growing season, you may want to side dress the tomatoes with fertilizer every two weeks. Follow the instructions on the fertilizer. Organic fertilizers will tend to take longer to break down and so last longer in the soil, so supplemental feedings may not be needed as often.

Organic gardeners may want to use a supplemental spray every couple of weeks during the growing season like fish emulsion or liquid seaweed. While not very high in N-P-K, these are rich in trace elements.