[Arid_gardener] Excess Nitrogen on tomatoes

[Tyler Storey]

Hi Peggy,
Sounds like your tomato plants must be very happy with all that food.  But
as you point out, that isn't good for fruit production.  There is an
old-fashioned method that you could try to "soak up" the nitrogen; I have
never tried it myself, but it seems fairly benign.  Place several inches of
sawdust (from untreated wood), chopped straw, or similar high-carbon fine
material around the tomato plants and carefully work it into the soil,
mixing well but minimizing root damage as much as possible.  Then water it
in a bit, but don't make it sopping.  The idea is that the carbon material
will "grab" the nitrogen, just as if you had a little compost pile going.  
Again, I haven't tried it, and it may be a gardening myth, but I suspect it
won't hurt.  Let me know if it works for you.
I hope this help,
Tyler Storey

-----Original Message-----
From: arid_gardener-bounces at CALS.arizona.edu
[mailto:arid_gardener-bounces at CALS.arizona.edu] On Behalf Of
peggyalexander at qwest.net
Sent: Saturday, May 10, 2008 9:07 AM
To: arid_gardener at Ag.arizona.edu
Subject: [Arid_gardener] Question from Home-Hort WWW page

Peggy
85266
peggyalexander at qwest.net

It looks like I "over nitrogenized" my tomato plants.  I have tall,
beautiful tomato plants with very few flowers.  Is it too late to correct
this and if not, what should I do?  I planted them all with banana skins,
heavily composted the soil around the transplants, then put more compost on
top of the base of each plant.  


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