How To Fertilize Tomato Plants For Big Success! Episode 209

Welcome to the Simple Garden Life podcast, a program dedicated to keeping the yard
of gardening simple, fun and always rewarding. Now Here are your hosts,
Jim and Mary Competti. Hello and welcome everybody to Simple Garden Life. I'm
your host, Jim Competti alone with my co host Mary Competti. Mary.
We're talking tomatoes today, or more specifically, fertilizing tomatoes. And as you
know, tomatoes are my absolute favorite crop. I think they're probably yours too.
I think they're probably most gardeners favorite crop. Yeah, I mean you're
talking tomatoes. You can make so many things from him. I mean we
make salsa, pasta, sauce, pizza, sauce. What am I missing?
Tomato juice, bloody Mary juice, which is probably good. We can
dice tomatoes, whole tomatoes. Do you talk about it? We can't at
all, and we use the tomatoes throughout the season. But my very favorite
thing to do with tomatoes is to go out into the garden and take a
bite of a fresh picked tomato. You know what, little salt and pepper
shaker. Yeah, out of the garden. It's the best thing I try
to hide from you. You don't see me doing that that's where my salt
and pepper figures go. That's right, that's right. So you know,
when it comes to fertilizing tomato plants, we have a lot of history with
this and a lot of experimentation we have really I would say that's probably the
thing that we have done the most over the past. But now twelve years
of gardening is really work with our tomato plants and what's best for fertilizing.
And that's what we're going to talk about today. And we're gonna talk about
some duds and don'ts, and also some common misconceptions about fertilizing tomatoes as far
as like when should you start, when should you stop, and things like
that. But I mean, let's face it, tomatoes are a big feeder
from the soil. Absolutely, They take a lot of nutrients from the ground,
and they require a lot of help and a lot of extra assistance to
get through the growing season. Yeah, they're a huge nitrogen, huge nitrogen
feeder that just like corn, they're gonna take a lot of the soil.
It's one of the reasons you want to rotate that crop every year, not
just for blight and for other things, but because they're going to deplete that
soil those resources, right, and speaking about blight. We do have another
podcast about tomatoes. Oh, we do. We did one last year,
so we'll link that in the notes on simple gardenlife dot com. I know
we say this every time, but it's it's what we do. It's our
job. You know, go sign up, sign up for our emails,
you share with your friends and family. Right, you'll get a notification when
we post a new podcast, which is every two weeks, and then also
any of our new how two articles on simple gardenlife dot com. So with
that said, let's get into this right now. You know, I think
fertilizing there's a little bit of a misconception of when you should start. People
think about, oh, I start when I plant those plants, or not
when I plant those plants, but after they're in the ground. Yeah,
I think most people think about fertilizing three to four weeks down the road.
Yeah, And for us, fertilizing has always been at the point of first
planning your plants. That's when you can give your tomatoes the right type of
nutrients. And we've talked about this before, but when you're planting your tomatoes,
you know that compost that should be going into your planning hole. Those
eggshells, a few crusted egg shells in every whole. Wormcastings, I think
we use a quarter cup, and coffee grounds a couple of teaspoons we put
in every hole. Those are all types of fertilizer that really help in a
slow and low way, establish your tomato plants early, right. And you
know, we talk about on our websites and blogs about fertilizing tomato plants,
and I know we fertilize them technically right as soon as we put them in
the ground. But you'll see a lot of information too that we say don't
fertize until one or two weeks of planting. So we fertilize when they plant,
but the external fertilization doesn't come to a couple weeks later. That's absolutely
and so let's get into that. So we talk about what we do right
at the start of planning. You know, we put that compost, the
eggshells, the castings, and the coffee grounds in the planting hole. Then
we finish on top with a little more compost. Those are all slow release
fertilizers that are going to just help them do what's important before you can really
fertilize, which is acclimate and establish And so what does that mean? I
mean establishing is such a difficult thing for people to kind of understand. It's
really just allowing your plants time to get out wars for their very first time.
Other than when you're hardening them off and saying, wow, I'm a
plant, I should probably start growing, right, it's actually the after shock
effect, Yeah, it is. I mean plans when you first transplant it,
no matter how nice the weather is or how bad the weather is,
they're going to go through a little transplant shock. There's a few days where
they're used to that perfect soil and that little container and now they've been expanded
into this big planning hole and it just takes them a while. Depending on
weather conditions, it can take anywhere from a week to two weeks to really
acclimate. We we like to use two weeks you said it earlier as our
go to of when we're going to actually start fertilizing past the planning hole.
Yeah, it's like sending your kid off to college. The first two weeks.
It takes them a couple of weeks to get used to things, and
then they start to flourish really to like years. I'm not sure about that.
I did not follow that plan. No, I'm just joking. So
okay, So what fertilizers work best, Well, there's really two ways to
fertilize any plant. Well, there's a lot of ways, but there's two
methods of fertilizing, and that's slow release, which is granular that are fertilizing,
and then there's liquid fertilizing, which is a much quicker and faster to
the point, and both have their uses. I mean, there's no doubt
about it. And I think the granular you know, for someone to picture
and visualize this, granulars where you take a scoop of pebbles of fertilizer pebbles
and place it around the planting hole. Absolutely, and those are those can
be fast acting, but there's still normally slow release. In other words,
they're going to break down slowly, they're going to release their nutrients into the
soil, and they're going to feed that plant over time. And then there's
liquid fertilizer, which feeds faster and feeds in two unique ways. And that's
one of the reasons we're going to talk more about liquid today. With tomatoes
than we are with granular because they feed through folier action, which means when
you water with the liquid fertilizer, it's getting absorbed through the stems and the
leaves and you know everything, and then it's also being absorbed like a normal
fertlizer wood through the roots, right, And granular is kind of the opposite.
They sit down on the soil. You don't want them to touch the
foliage or the stems because it can burn them. But we'll get into that
in a few Yeah. I mean, both both have their advantages. They
really do. When it comes to plants. We talk about this all the
time when you're talking about any type of fertilization, and especially with garden plants,
you don't want to put too much on too quickly, and that's where
slow release comes in place. But you can still liquid fertilize in a slow
release fashion, and we're going to talk about that. I think right now
we'll hit a very quick early ad break that'll be the only one for the
show. Like we always do, we try to keep it simple and sweet.
We'll come back and we're going to talk about why we feel and proof
is in the pudding for us over the last twelve years of kind of working
this through. Liquid fertilizers are the best for tomatoes, and more importantly,
how to use that liquid fertilizing when you're doing it. So we'll be right
back right after this, okay, and we are back talking about how to
fertilize tomatoes. And we talked about the two ways you could fertilize right before
the break, Mary, you know, granular or liquid, And really for
us, it's proven over time that liquid is the better choice when you're fertilizing
these tomato plants long term, right, And you know, we do use
some granular fertilizers at first when we plan our tomato plants, which is actually
a fertilizer. I would consider worm castings a granular fertilizer. Yeah, it's
not liquid, You're absolutely right. Compost is could fall in that category as
well. And we continue through the season, and I think this is very
important with our tomato plants. We put a couple inches around every base of
our tomato plants about I don't know, eight to ten inches in diameter,
a couple inches thick. That is a form of slow release fertilizer because every
time it rains or you're watering your garden, those new tunes are leaching down
into the soil. So you're absolutely right. But now let's get into how
you really want to power those plants up. And I think we're talking about
in season tomato plants, so they're already planted, they're already established, so
let's fertilize and get lots of tomato growth. Absolutely, So here's the part
with liquid fertilizing. For us, we use compost Team. We'll talk about
that in a little second, but you can also use There is a really
great amount of organic liquid fertilized on the product on the market. Now.
Miracle Growth came out with an organic solution. Espomtmade of liquid. Plant food
is one of our favorite. They're very organic based things. And why organic,
you might ask, I mean, for us, it's it's it's a
lot of reasons. We have that organic bent to us anyway, we like
to keep things natural and simple. But you know, at the end of
the day, you're eating and consuming this food, do you really want synthetic
fertilizers on that? I don't know. Personally, I don't either, and
I know some people do in natural choice and that's fine, but we will
link those different fertilizers in our posts on simple gardenlife dot com. Yeah,
both of those organic solutions that you could thear water soluble, you can mix
them in and you can create some great organic fertilizers with them. M let's
go to ours though, and why we do it. I mean, our
liquid fertizer of choice is and will always be compost to you. You can
simply not beat it for the effects it does. It's all natural, and
it's free, and if you've looked at the price of fertilizers lately, that's
a really good benefit when you when you have your own compost, you can
make it. And again we'll link it to the site of how to make
compost t how to make composts we have, we'll have all those articles on
simple gardenlife dot com on this episode. But you know, it's one hundred
percent natural and organic and it's easy to make an apply right, And a
lot of people sometimes get scared of making their own fertilizer. They think they're
going to ruin things. So we'll get into that later. But compost he
is really the best liquid fertizer that you could use. Yeah, So now
let's talk a little bit about you know, frequency. I guess we want
to talk about how often we do this, and you said it first,
let's talk about the first time. So the plants need to establish, they
need to get established and marry for us, that's that's really two weeks.
We wait about ten to fourteen days allow the plants to get in place.
You can tell plants start to look a little bit normal, they're starting to
grow. That's when you want to hit them with that first boost of liquid
fertilizer. Right and just when you first plan a tomato plant and you put
it in the ground and you walk away and you look at it's like,
oh, it's not growing, or it looks kind of weak. Right now
it's getting used and adjusted to the soil. So give it some time to
get established before you throw a fizer on it. Yeah, we talk about
that all the time. It can just really cause disaster for them. So
we're talking about compost t we're talking about you can also use obviously the liquid
fertilizers, and we'll talk about that. But I really think this lends to
the question of the week, which we get quite often, and I think
it's when we should answer to on today's show yes. The question of the
week is from DNA from Charleston, South Carolina. How do you make your
compost t? I heard that you have to use an aviator or water pump
or can be dangerous for your plants, you know, I always kind of
great question, excellent question, because that's what happens. You see these things
written on the web, and so many people get fearful, like I don't
want to damage my plants. I might be making something that's not good or
not even safe. And sometimes it can be so scientific that it scares people
away. It does. And here's the thing. Compost t does not have
to be scientific. I don't care what the basis. We've done it for
twelve years. We know this. You put a half you know, you
fill a five gallon bucket with compost halfway up. You fill it with water,
You stir it a couple of times, maybe ten times if you're really
aggressive and you're good. Over the course of you know, three to seven
days, you allow it to steep. You strain that liquid off, and
that liquid is pure gold. It's absorbed all of the nutrients, not all,
but ninety nine percent of the nutrients from that compost. And now you're
going to place it on your plants. The air rador pumps, the fancy
equipment they all try to sell heal, it's just not necessary if you if
you allow time to go buy, it's going to leach into the into the
compost water. Yes, it'll work, you know it'll work that way.
But you know, we try to keep things simple. Guardings, you know,
overwhelming sometimes by itself. Keep things simple, use our method and you
will see your plants flourish. Yeah, I mean we do the same thing
when we make our compost t or excuse me, a worm casting T.
It's the same concept of soaking. You know. For worm casting T we
use I think three quarters to a cup of castings to one to two gallons
of water. We steep it for twenty four hours and again you can let
it sit for two or three days. If you think these things ahead,
it's just going to get that much stronger. But what you're left with with
compost T or worm casting tea for tomatoes is a liquid that a you're watering
your plants when you use it, so it's kind of nice you can do
it as part of your normal watering program, but also it's going to absorb
into those plants right away. I mean, Mary, you can talk about
this, but you've you've witnessed it and watched it. You know, we
put compost tea or a liquid fertilizer, and again, if you don't have
composting, you don't want to use it, Use one of the organic fertilizers
that are soluble. You're gonna get the same effect. But I'm telling you,
it's unbelievable to watch the deep darn green leaves start to form and that
plant grow within two to three days. Absolutely, you know, you sprinkle
the water on top of the foliage and at the base of the plant and
you can just see them grow within days. It's really amazing to watch.
So how much this this is the big question I always ask is how much
do you fertilize and what are you doing and using how often? So here's
our rule of thumb for that. First of all, we are big believers.
Don't ever make the full dose suspect. Actually, if you're purchasing a
liquid organic fertilizer making it half strength, you don't need to full dose if
you do it more regular And why is that important? And why do we
say that? Because if you over fertilize any plant. You're gonna do one
thing, and it's gonna you're gonna create all this massive green growth. And
while you're patting yourself on the back for that, it's not good. No,
there's going to be absolutely no blooms or very little blooms on the plant.
The fertilizer is going to tell the plant to grow more green foliage.
Oh yeah, and you're not going to have the fruit that all the nutrients
I need. I'm just going to keep growing. I'm jacking the bean stock
right now, and I keep and you know, we laugh at this because
we've done this, you know, when we were way way way back,
when you think more is always better, it's not. So you know,
weaken that up a little bit, apply it every we liked every few weeks.
I mean, I think fourteen days for tomatoes is a fantastic ratio to
get on for the first month or two when they're in the soil, because
it really just keeps giving them that boost of nutrients, not at a massive
rate, but it's really getting them in there right. And a good roll
of thumb is do half of the concentrate, half of the strength. Even
composte if you have a strong compost tea, you know what, put put
half of it and water in half of it and compost tea. Yeah,
you can water it down normal compost team made in the span of you know,
four or five day, it's gonna be fine. That's the same thing
about worm casting tea. It's why we like them so much is they have
a general low um ability. You know, they're they're feeding slow and low
as opposed to desorganic fertize have a little bit higher nitrogen, potassium and uh,
you know an MPK rating which is going to be much higher um and
the phosphorus. So you just really want to do that every few weeks,
um, Mary, I would say, we do that kind of fertilizing until
um the tomatoes really start to form and become just a bit just like they're
starting to turn red, wouldn't you say? Right, you know, you
start seeing some fruit develop on the on the plant, and then you continue
to fertilize until you start seeing the green tomato is just barely starting to ripe,
and then stop. Yeah, and we don't fertilize after that. And
you might ask why. It's that same concept of once the plant starts to
produce fruit. You want its energy and everything else to go into keeping that
fruit going, and you don't need to overpower the plant. There's a little
bit of a difference when you're talking about plants form or determinate plants like a
Roman tomato. They're going to grow all of their produce and push it out
right then and there over a two to three week period, and they're done
for the year. That plant. You can stop fertilizing forever. It's a
little bit different with indeterminates like heirloom tomatoes that grow all year black crim brandywine
right, mister stripe. You can continue to give those low doses, but
at that point about once a month back off when they start producing. And
I think it's important too if you are doing indeterminate tomato plants to you know,
it's important to trim and prune those tomato leaves so the fruit can get
the energy, not the foliage well. And you're also doing better of keeping
the fertilizer you're using to the plant. You know, it's it's just a
much better way to conserve and not you're not fertilizing in a bunch of green
growth, but you're fertilizing the plant where it so how much this is the
other question. We get a lot. So it really depends on the plant's
size. Obviously, when the plant is just in the ground, it might
only be six to eight inches tall. We like to use about an eighth
of a gallon on every plant at that point when we fertilize, and Mary
said it a little bit earlier, we put a little bit on the leaves
and we put it on the soil. But Mary, it's also important when
you're fertilizing. Absolutely, you know, fertilizing first thing in the morning when
the sun's not out yet. What happens if you fertilize in the heat of
the sun. You can actually burn the foilage and leaves and really damage the
plants. Yeah, and you know you want to get out there and do
that, and early in the day. Your next best time is evening.
I don't like that because it leads moisture on the plants, which you can
lead to mildew. Early morning is the best if you do. If for
some reason the world has stopped and the only time you can fertilize is the
middle afternoon, just don't hit your plants. Leaves, go to the ground,
put it in the roots, it's STI going to get in there quickly
and go from there. So the beauty of the liquid fertizing again is it's
going to absorb both of the roots and it's going to in the soil and
through the fullier action. I remember, you can use this as part of
your watering process, so you don't water then fertilize in the same few minutes.
It actually takes place of your watering on that day. Yeah, and
here's the other thing about fertilizing. If it does happen to rain right after
you do that, or for rains. And I laugh and say that right
now because I can look outside and we're in the midst of another terrific downpour
here on the farm in an old world garden, which it's feeding the garden.
It is feeding the garden. So you're, okay, that's the great
thing about this type, because the fertilize is just going to get driven into
the ground. It's just it's nice to do it in the morning, as
Mary says, because it's just a better time for the plants to absorb it
in. So you know, kind of let's look at this again. I
think this is a really good way to kind of talk about it. Fertilizing
tomatoes for success really comes down to starting when you plant, getting those nutrients
and slow release nutrients into the planting hole around the roots so they can really
have a steady source of diet. That's your compost, your worm castings,
some coffee grounds, and yes, crush up a couple of egg shells super
fine and put them in that. So it's going to give them calcium.
It's going to help prevent everything from you know, blossom and rot to giving
them nutrition to grow better. So that's the first part. You want to
start that early on. Yeah, allow the plants to establish once you get
them planted, and fertize every two weeks. But in the lower dose.
You know, some people ask us like how much should I pour on the
foliage or how much I pour on the ground, you know, and that's
a great question. So we usually use the roll of thumb of do about
a third of the fertilizing on the foliage and do two thirds on the ground.
Yeah, that's right. And we said an eighth of a gallon when
they were small. We increase that as the plant grows, you know,
by mid you know, let's say six to eight weeks. We're probably using
a quarter to a half a gallon per plant, and maybe that last fertilization
before they're really starting to go, it might be as much as three quarters
of a gallon. You're gonna know that with your plant. You just want
to coat the plant with that fertilizer. And Mary says, also get around
the roots, and don't forget we talked about this all the time, but
I can't tell you how important it is to put that compost ring around your
plants. A couple of inches of fresh or not fresh compost, but compost
around the ring of your plant, maybe eight to ten inches on diameter.
Heck, throw a half a cup like we do with worm castings. On
top of that too, there's your slow release that handles the in between two
weeks of fertilizing. And I mean, you know you can tell right now
it's going to be a great, great year of gardening when you have that
kind of power slowly into your plants. We've watched it and watched it work
time after time, right and you know people always ask us too, how
do we actually fertilize? What do we use? And you know we've always
used what we call the milk jug method. You know, we pour our
liquid fertilizer and milk jugs. That way, we sprinkle on the foliage,
the liquid on the foliage, and then when we pour down by the base
of the plant, we can hit directly buy the roots where the most fertilizer
is needed. Hey, folks, there's not a lot you can control in
gardening season. We can tell you that right now. I don't know if
you can hear it. We remix this, we do, but we're real
and we do it. But I've never heard it ring this hard even through
our little study here. The fun storms happy right now. But what you
can't control was how you feed those tomato plants and how you can get them
to grow. So you know it's important to do and stick with it and
have a fun time growing tomatoes and you'll be amazed at what it can do.
Again. All the resources will be on simplegardenlife dot com on the Fertilizing
Tomatoes episode. And we really really appreciate you all for listening. Yeah,
and if you ever want to share our podcast with someone, please do so.
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come right here at least right now. That's right Mary, I think it's
time, all right. Remember whatever you do, find the fun and gardening
and grow something beautiful. Until next week, everybody, hope they're sunshine,
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