Tomato Feed Isn’t Just for Tomatoes – These Vegetables, Fruits, and Flowers Will Also Benefit This Season
See which plants you can use tomato feed on for stunning results
Tomato fertilizer is rich in potassium and plays a staple role in feeding tomatoes during the season. Savvy gardeners don’t save their tomato feed just for tomatoes, though, as lots of other plants around the garden can benefit from it, too.
The nutrients in tomato feed promote flowering and fruiting. That makes tomato feed extremely helpful for any plants you are growing for fruits or flowers, including many vegetables, soft fruits, and flowering annuals and perennials.
Yes, such fertilizers will always be essential for growing tomatoes. But share the love around the garden to the following plants that benefit from tomato feed as well. Once they start flowering, regular feeding encourages a bounty of fruit and flowers to enjoy throughout the season.
Can You Use Tomato Fertilizer on Other Plants?
The simple answer is yes, and here’s why. Tomato feed is high in potassium, one of the three essential plant nutrients: nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium. It is the K in NPK, which is shown on packaging as three plant fertilizer numbers indicating the makeup of the major nutrients.
Potassium promotes overall vigor and the development of fruits and flowers. Using it on plants that benefit from tomato feed gives you lots of vibrant blooms and higher-quality vegetables and fruits.
Here are many plants that benefit from tomato feed, along with some that don’t.
Vegetables
Gardeners all know tomato fertilizer is a tried and trusted way to increase tomato yields. It does this by providing tomato plants with all the nutrients they need to develop and ripen lots of tasty fruit.
The same logic applies to any other plants across your vegetable garden that you grow for flowers and fruit. These will benefit in the same way, and you’ll get the best yields from a regular feeding regime.
It includes peppers (both bell and chili peppers), eggplant, cucumber, zucchini, pumpkin, and squash. All of these crops need ample potassium throughout the season to support strong fruiting.
You should start fertilizing these vegetables once you see them flower, and continue feeding them every few weeks. If any are in pots in a vegetable container garden, though, a good feeding schedule should increase to once a week.
Fruits
Fruit plants also benefit from tomato feed, especially those growing in containers. Wherever they are growing, such a fertilizer does wonders for these plants. It encourages flowering and helps develop and ripen a strong yield to enjoy each summer.
Soft fruit plants, including strawberries, raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries, and currants (including blackcurrants, redcurrants, whitecurrants, and more), all benefit from tomato feed. As do melons, tomato feed makes an ideal choice to fertilize melons once they start flowering.
The list extends beyond soft fruit, as tomato fertilizers can also be used to fertilize fruit trees in containers. Any fruit trees in pots need regular fast-acting doses of nutrients to stay vigorous and produce a crop, and a weekly feed with a liquid tomato fertilizer ticks all the right boxes.
One caveat to the above advice is not to use tomato feed on citrus trees in pots. Citrus trees have specific needs, and it is always best to use a specially-formulated citrus fertilizer, such as this citrus tree booster available on Amazon.
Flowers
The use of tomato feed doesn’t need to be limited to just a vegetable or kitchen garden; it has wider uses and can prove invaluable for boosting flowers in containers or hanging baskets.
For yards adorned with patio pots and summer container displays, a weekly application of high-potassium fertilizer is an effective way to boost both the size and abundance of blooms.
The high potassium content encourages flowering plants to burst into heavy bloom for longer, rather than direct energy into foliage (which would happen if you used higher-nitrogen fertilizers).
Annual and perennial flowering plants, including petunias, geraniums, fuchsias, and dahlias, all benefit from it. You can even use tomato feed to fertilize roses once they start showing buds to help get a top show from yours.
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What to Avoid
Where there is a wide selection of plants that benefit from tomato feed, there are those for which it would be a fertilizing mistake to use such products.
Primarily, you should avoid tomato feed on those plants in which you want lots of lush leafy growth, such as foliage plants and leafy greens like lettuce, spinach, or kale. These plants are grown for their foliage, and using tomato feed encourages them to flower instead.
It is also inadvisable to use tomato feed to fertilize seedlings. Young plants want a balanced fertilizer, or a product with more nitrogen and phosphorus, rather than lots of phosphorus.
You don’t necessarily need to buy bottles of feed, as there are ways to make your own tomato fertilizer at home.
One fantastic DIY plant feed to make is a comfrey fertilizer. You do this by cutting and steeping the leaves of this perennial plant (you can get comfrey seeds on Amazon to sow) to make a rich tea that can be diluted and used to fertilize all the plants listed above.
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