[Fen]

Gardening section of"Quality" weekend newspaper recommended feeding young tomato plants with low N fertilizer when in early stages of growth. Only feed mine when first fruits are visible.
Am I missing something?

[Yorkie]

Nitrogen produces leafy growth. Usually, compost or soil has sufficient nutrients for seedling and potted-on plants, but if you needed to boost it a bit you could do so - as they say, a weak solution, not the full solution.

The feeding once the first truss has set, is with a tomato fertiliser, which is high in potash - aimed at flowers (and thus fruits / tomatoes)

[Fen]

I'm not sure but will feed a few,  (Sungold and Shirley) and see what happens.

[8doubles]

It used to be reckoned that fertiliser applied before the first truss had set just made the plant leaf up more .
It would make more work thinning the leaves later for good air flow, pollination and ripening.

[JayG]

For the past few years I have mixed in a small amount of balanced fertiliser (Growmore, 7:7:7) to the compost before planting out, because experience over a few years suggested that the compost (B&Q multi-purpose) didn't contain enough nutrients for strong early growth (and certainly not for 6 weeks.)

New learning curve starts this year as B&Q has done my conscience a favour and stopped selling peat-based composts - I'm sure there will be discussions on this forum in the months to come about what their, and perhaps others' offerings are like this year... 

[rowlandwells]

someone told me to get some calcium nitrate to feed my toms but as its the first time I'm going to use this I'm not sure when I should use this can anyone give us some advice when is the best time to  use calcium nitrate

[comfreykid]

  I use calcium nitrate on my tomato plants to avoid blossom end rot and to keep the plants healthy.
One application once the plants are established in their final growing place and a couple through out the season when fruit is developing and growing. Always apply when you have just watered for best take up . 

[rowlandwells]

your reply is duly noted comfreykid many thank for that RW