Tomato Fertilizer Choices for an Average Farmer

Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 at 7:56 am

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Don’t you just love a ripe juicy tomato? Well it’s really simple to grow those juicy and delicious tomatoes. There is more than a one way to make sure your tomato crop is constantly higher year after year.

What To Do First

You need to decide which variety of tomatoes you will be cultivating, we tend to go with the tomatoes of my childhood but each year we do try new hybrids which are less prone to pests and diseases. Some varieties are sweeter than the rest when grown in an ideal site, while others are highly reliant on soil type. The ones we like we grow again the next year.

You also have to think about the farming techniques you’re going to make use of for your tomato plots. You may pinch out the suckers, as some gardeners do, but you can also choose not to. There are gardeners who build cages or put up stakes to hold up the plants, while other growers let their crops trail on the ground.

We found that the smaller tomato cages were useless as our tomato plants grew so massive they just crushed the thin wire frame. We are building stronger frames for the tomato plants to climb by using stronger stakes and perhaps fencing strong enough to hold the weight.

If you want lots of healthy tomatoes you will need to feed them periodically. Because of this, you are required to pick a fertilizer that has a high volume of the required nutrients, such as nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

Last year we went without any fertilizer for our tomatoes and we still had so many that they destroyed our cages. Not sure if we want them to do even better. Okay, yes we do so we will be using fertilizer this coming season.

Before buying a fertilizer product, check the label for the NPK ratio. This corresponds to the amount of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium in the fertilizer formula. For instance, a package with 5-5-5 on it indicates equivalent parts of N, P, and K are present, while 5-1-1 means the tomato fertilizer holds five times as much nitrogen as phosphorus and potassium.

Each ingredient plays an important role in the growth of your tomato plants. For greener leaves, nitrogen is crucial. For better and on-time flowering and fruiting, you need the right quantity of phosphorus. Rooting and root enlargement can be improved by potassium.

If, like most tomato plant gardeners in the world today, your goal is to keep everything organic, you can use fish emulsion liquid fertilizer instead of synthetic fast-release fertilizers to supply the needed minerals to your tomato crop. An organic fertilizer in liquid form can easily be absorbed by your plants, and is ideal for a fast developing plant like tomato. You can spray this tomato fertilizer directly on your plants, or you can apply them to the soil in granule form.