Garden Nutrients: Go Bananas Over Planting Tomatoes!

One of the most anticipated vegetables in my garden every year are the tomatoes! There’s just nothing like the flavor of freshly picked, home grown tomatoes! Because I want my tomatoes to have as many nutrients as possible right from the start, this year I am trying a few extra additives when planting each tomato plant.

For the week or two prior to planting in the garden, I saved my banana peels, orange peels and egg shells instead of putting those in the compost like I do the rest of the year. I allowed everything to dry, sitting on top of our wood burning stove (although just air drying is fine too). I also cut the banana peels into chunks to make them easier to handle while planting. To aid in more rapid breakdown, I ground up the eggshells and orange peels into granules using a food processor.

When it was time to plant the tomatoes, I added the ground orange peel / egg shell combo as well as several banana peel chunks into each hole before inserting the tomato plant. This combination of organic matter will provide a continuous feeding of essential nutrients for the growing plants including potassium, calcium, nitrogen, sulfur, phosphorus, magnesium and sodium.

That’s it! Add the soil, stake and support the plants, water as needed and there should be some fabulous tomatoes in a few weeks!