Tried growing tomatoes in my Denver backyard with no fertilizer and got 40 pounds of fruit

I was too lazy to buy any plant food this summer so I just threw some cherry tomato starters in the ground and forgot about them. Watered them maybe twice a week when I remembered and somehow ended up with 40 pounds of fruit by September. My neighbor Bob who uses all this fancy compost and liquid feed only got like 15 pounds from the same number of plants. Makes me wonder if all that expensive soil stuff is just a racket or if I just got stupid lucky with the weather here.

2 comments

2 Comments

felixfisher2d agoTop Commenter

My neighbor Bob used to be all about that expensive organic fertilizer and he'd give me crap for just using plain dirt. But after I got 40 pounds from cherry tomatoes with nothing but water and luck, he was quiet for like two weeks. I tried his fancy fish emulsion and kelp mix one year and got maybe 20 pounds from the same patch. The weather and soil quality seem to matter way more than what you dump on top. Denver's got that dry high plains dirt but the sun is strong and if you hit a good rain pattern it can really push growth. Bob still buys the expensive stuff but he's not as smug about it anymore.

tyler62d ago

Have you ever had a season where everything just clicked despite doing nothing special? I had a similar thing happen with my bell peppers a couple years back. I'm in New Mexico so it's basically the same deal as Denver - dry, high altitude, crazy sun. One year I just threw some compost on top and forgot about them, got like 50 peppers off three plants. Next year I did the whole regimen with bone meal and worm castings and barely got 30. In my experience it really does come down more to the luck of the weather and what's already in the ground than what you feed them.