Manure and fertilizers

Like we require enough nourishment to grow and work properly; growing tomatoes require enough nutrition for the growth, development of plants, fruit set and fruit growth and development. For growing tomatoes, the crop requires enough quantities of nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium containing fertilizers, enough organic manure and some more other minerals.

How much fertilizers and manure are required for growing tomatoes is dependent on several factors. Principally, it depends on the nutrients available in the soils. Second, how much nutrients the crop deplete from the soils. Tomato plants which yield about 40 tons of the fruits from 1 hectare of land take about 93 kg of nitrogen, 20 kg of phosphorus and 126 kg of potash from the soils. On this basis too, the dose of the chemical fertilizers can be decided for growing tomatoes successfully. All the chemical nutrients cannot be supplemented in the form of chemical fertilizers. For growing tomatoes, organic manure supplements a variety of nutrients required for the growth and development of the plants and fruits. So, vegetable growing farmers must consider the chemical fertilizers as well as manure for growing tomatoes successfully.

For growing tomatoes of any kind; tomato variety and seasons are the next important factors to determine the quantity of the fertilizers. For growing tomatoes, quantity of fertilizers required to apply to the crop depends on the availability of soil moisture in your vegetable garden too.

For growing tomatoes, you must decide the dose of chemical fertilizers which also depends on the level of nutrients present in the soils. It is fact that soil nutrients vary from place to place. So accordingly, the dose of required nutrients also varies. The rate can be 40-60 kg nitrogen, 60-80 kg phosphorus and 100-120 kg potassium per hectare. Another recommendation can be 100 kg nitrogen, 80 kg phosphorus and 50 kg potassium and 25 tons of farmyard manure per hectare.

For growing tomatoes successfully, quantity of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium are all generally applied through chemical fertilizers. Other nutrients such as magnesium, zinc, boron are also applied in inorganic form. Some concentrated organic manure like bone meal, oil seed cake, well made castings of earthworms and other forms of the manure and compost are also available in your market which will supply all the required major and minor nutrients. You can make the business of growing tomatoes successful with the use of inorganic chemical fertilizers as well as and organic manure.

Nowadays, farmers are formulating Japanese Bokasi to manure their crop for growing tomatoes. Japanese Bokasi is formulated mixing oil seed cake, bone meal, rice bran and the starter / culture of effective microorganism (EM) and storing the mixture with the anaerobic respiration for about 30 days. The Bokasi is one of richest sources to supply all nutrients for growing tomatoes. Farmers can use phosphate utilizing bacteria too to improve the quality of the Bokasi. All organic manure and compost should be applied at the time of land preparation at least seven days ago if you want to do occupation of growing tomatoes in your vegetable garden. In other words, the well rotten manures and compost should be applied to the soils seven days before the sowing of the seeds and before transplantation of the tomato seedlings.

All phosphorus, potassium and thirty percent of the nitrogen fertilizers are applied in the rows seven days before the transplantation of the seedlings for growing tomatoes. The gardeners who are growing tomatoes of hybrid type or grape type or open pollinated variety must prepare their soils very well. The soil is mixed of up to ten centimeter after the application of manures and fertilizers for growing tomatoes successfully. Remaining nitrogen fertilizer is halved and applied two times; one just after 45 days of transplantation and second at the time of flowering. For growing tomatoes, one to two percent nitrogen fertilizer such as urea can also be applied through foliar spray in the form of urea-water solution.

For growing tomatoes, gardeners must be very careful about the nutrient deficiency symptoms. The plants can be identified as boron deficient by tallying the plant disorder with nutrient deficiency chart. Accordingly the symptoms of the tomato plants should be corrected. Otherwise the gardeners cannot be benefited from growing tomatoes. For growing tomatoes, the soils where boron is deficient should be corrected through the application of borax during the time of land preparation. Recommended dose is about 10 kg borax per hectare. By the way, we can know the boron deficiency symptom as pitted and corky fruit, deformed shape of the fruits, malformed and uneven ripening of the fruits. The tomato plants produce cracked fruits if the soil is deficient in boron. Growing tomatoes can be managed spraying borax solution over the crop foliage with leaf sticker if the soil is deficient in boron. The strength of the solution should be 0.3 to 0.4% of borax for the spray.

If you are going to start growing tomatoes in your land, you better examine zinc content in your soils. If the soil is deficient in zinc, apply zinc to your soils in the form of zinc sulfate. If you start growing tomatoes without the examination of the soils, the crop will show zinc deficiency symptom. Then, you better spray zinc sulfate solution with sticker to the tomato foliage which is the best way to control the disorder due to the zinc deficiency.

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