Does anyone make their own liquid tomato fertilizer?

[cwilk]

I have been googling this but keep getting conflicting articles and masses of information about potassium/magnesium/nitrogen balance which I dont quite understand.


The year before last I was more or less organic apart from tomato fertlilizer and got loads of tasty toms. Last year I dug in lots of manure to the greenhouse over the winter and didnt use any liquid feed. Lots of toms but not much taste! But this also might be due to having hardly any sun last year, or too much nitrogen from the manure??

Anyone any experience of this? There are some big patches of comfrey near by and I wonder if a liquid comfrey feed will be better?

thanks in advance

[Hedge Witch]

The advice I've been given is fairly consistent. Don't feed until the first fruit sets, and then use a feed specifically for Tomatoes.

I had the same problem as you last year, loads of fruit (Shirley and Money Maker) but they were tasteless. I will turn my attention to my feeding regime this year.

[nightshade]

I find chicken manure/pellets makes for tasty Tomatoes

[The Woodman]

I used to make my own fertilizer every year when I grew Shirley and Gardners Delight.

Collect a quarter to a third of a bucket of sheep dung and fill the bucket with water. Stir daily and add a cup full to every full watering can. Add more water and dung as required. Never had a problem with it.

[Jim Ford]

Originally Posted by Hedge Witch

I had the same problem as you last year, loads of fruit (Shirley and Money Maker) but they were tasteless.

Money Maker's a commercial variety - heavy cropping, medium regular sized fruit. The 'Golden Delicious' of tomatoes. Flavour doesn't come into it - the object is to get them into the supermarket trolley and through the checkout. What comes after doesn't matter.

Jim

[Hedge Witch]

I did hear that herbicides may be present in this type of manure if the grass had been sprayed. These might remain and damage the crop you are trying to feed.

[The Woodman]

If that Q's for me, HW - the sheep dung was collected from river fields that were never sprayed. As I said, I never had a problem and in particluar, the Gardners Delight were the best variety I ever grew. Mind you, I never experimented with many as I thought GD were the best.

[Hedge Witch]

Originally Posted by Jim Ford

Money Maker's a commercial variety - heavy cropping, medium regular sized fruit. The 'Golden Delicious' of tomatoes. Flavour doesn't come into it - the object is to get them into the supermarket trolley and through the checkout. What comes after doesn't matter.

Jim

My Dad grew Ailsa Craig one year and they were fantastic. I think this is similar to the varieties I grew. So I feel there must have been something else I was missing

[cwilk]

I have heard the same about moneymaker - loads of fruit but no taste. I am trying gardeners delight, a beefsteak variety and a hanging basket tomato called tumbling tom. I have tried the tumbling tom one before and it was delicious!

I like the idea of the sheep poo fertlizer. wrt my previous thread - why is cat poo horrendous but the thought of a bucket of festering sheep poo soup is really quite appealing?!

Anyone out there tried comfrey?

[Jim Ford]

Unless you're growing for maximum profit per hectare, I don't think you should really worry about speciality fertilisers - but to bear in mind the general rule:

Nitrogen for leaves eg. cabbages lettuce.
Phosphorus for roots eg. carrots and potatoes.
Potassium for flowers and fruit eg. tomatoes and strawberries.

So that means you can usefully put wood ash on tomatoes and IIRC, compost some bracken, which is high in potash.

Also with toms. keep watering to a regular regime - don't let them dry out and then drown with water, which can cause them to split or suffer from 'blossom end rot'. Toms. can also suffer from magnesium deficiency which show itself as 'interveinal yellowing'. The remedy for this is to spray with a solution of epsom salts.

If you're growing in the ground in a greenhouse, over the years you _will_ find they grow less and less vigorously. This is caused mainly by a build up of viruses. The only cure for this is to dig out and replace the soil - and I mean _dig_out_, which means to a depth of at least a couple of feet or more. Growing in grow-bags avoids this problem (which is why it's done commercially) but introduces, others mainly to do with watering.

Jim