Tomatoes are one of the most popular vegetables to grow, and if you want to pick the biggest, tastiest crop it’s essential to feed your plants.
Using a good liquid feed will give you sweet, ripe tomatoes for longer than controlled-release fertiliser alone, so Which? Gardening set out to see which will do the best job. Tomato feeds are also great for feeding pots of flowering patio plants, such as petunias and begonias.
Learn more about how to grow tomatoes.
How our tests find you the best
We've tested 19 tomato feeds
They're all widely available
Yield
We recorded how many tomatoes each plant produced
Plant health
We compared the plant health and vigour
The best tomato feeds from our tests
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USING THE TABLE The more stars the better. Yields are healthy fruit from three plants. OVERALL SCORE Ignores price and is based on: yield (weight and number of tomatoes) 80%; foliage health and vigour 20%
When to feed tomato plants
Adding a controlled-release fertiliser to your compost at planting time will provide your plants with the nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium (NPK) they need for healthy growth, but they may well be running low by the time your tomatoes start to ripen. If you haven’t added a controlled-release fertiliser, you should start giving your tomatoes a liquid feed once the first truss of fruit has formed.
Discover our best controlled-release feeds.
How often should you feed tomato plants?
Most products need to be applied at least once a week, with the frequency sometimes increasing once the second truss of fruits develops; check the dilution and frequency on the product label.
Is tomato feed good for all plants?
Tomato feeds aren’t just for tomatoes; most have more potassium in relation to the nitrogen and phosphorus, which helps to promote flowering and fruiting. You can therefore use a tomato feed on any container-grown plants that produce lots of flowers or fruits, such as fuchsias, clematis, aubergines, cucumbers, peppers, courgettes and chillies. However, don't use it for feeding seedlings.
How we test tomato feeds
- We bought 19 widely available liquid tomato feeds, including our previous Best Buy.
- We planted tomato ‘Shirley’ plants into 10L pots of a Best Buy compost, with three plants per feed on test.
- We grew the plants as cordons in an unheated polytunnel. We fed them according to the instructions for each feed, using the amounts listed on the bottles; unless specified, we gave each plant 500ml of diluted feed at each feeding.
- We rated the health of the foliage during the trial and weighed all the tomatoes.