Fertilizing your garden can almost feel like a planting shortcut. Rather than having to wait to see results, you can feed your plants a healthy dose of super-nutrients and they'll begin to grow tall and bushy and drop fruits and vegetables. This is especially true with tomatoes, which love to gobble up the extra nutrients. "Tomatoes are fairly heavy feeders that do best with routine fertilizing throughout the growing season to support their large plant size and allow for ample fruit production," Deanna Talerico, a garden educator and creator of Homestead and Chill, exclusively tells House Digest. But that doesn't mean you should be pushing fertilizer on them all season long. Instead, you want to give it to the plant several times during the entire growing season: once right before you plant it, one more time when it starts developing fruit, and again a few weeks after.
By limiting your fertilization to these several times in a growing season, you ensure your plants get a safe amount of nutrition. It might seem counterintuitive, but too much fertilizer can actually have detrimental effects on your plants. For instance, adding too much when they're young can burn the plant, killing it off before you can harvest any ripe fruit. To avoid that, here is how often to fertilize your plants depending on growing stages.
Mix In Fertilizer A Week Prior To Planting
You want to give your seedlings the best possible start when planting them, and an easy way to do that is to place them into nutrient-rich soil. Because of that, the first time you should add fertilizer to your tomatoes is right before you plant them. This will prep the soil, making it as hospitable as possible for the young roots. "For the best results, amend the soil with compost along with a reputable, well-balanced, slow-release organic vegetable fertilizer (e.g., NPK 5-5-5) a week or two prior to planting," Talerico exclusively tells House Digest. When doing so, you want to limit the amount to what the packaging directions recommend, as well as avoid high-nitrogen varieties. These will "lead to large leafy growth but can inhibit the plant's ability to produce fruit," she explained.
