I think a lot depends on your soil. I have to go easy on the fertilizer because my soil is high in mineral. I have used too much and hurt production. I am trying tomato tone this year, which is a first for me. I like to side dress and then work it in just under the surface of the soil, I have not mulched yet because it is so wet.

I have not mulched too wet and cool. soil is sandy on top and clay subsoil. It is been over farmed that is why it was returned to lawn. I was going to plant 5 to 10 plants ended up with 45 in the ground

I do the same thing every year. I always say that I need no more than 12 tomato plants. I don't remember having that few. This year I wanted to plant a few extra because of the mess the economy is in. I have planted more this year than ever, much of it is in the wildlife garden where the soil is unamended and no power or water. I have been downsizing the home gardens and now have less room there. I have 34 tomatoes, 15 to 20 peppers,beans and peas. I have planted 20 tomatoes and other vegetables across the highway in the wildlife garden, which much is under water now.

I Fertilizer very little at the house, and none across the highway. I just wait and see how the plants look before I feed them. I have had a soil test, so I know about what the mineral count is, but Arkansas never test for nitrogen unless you pay for it, I just feed a little nitrogen if the plants are pale. I could add little lime also, but I am running 6.2 to 6.7, which should be close enough for anything I plan on growing at this time, but all this water is messing me up,

I like to use Tomato Tone as a top dressing. Its NPK is 3-4-6, I think. If you need something with slightly higher NPK numbers, you could use Mater Magic. I find it at Home Depot and it comes in red round bottles shaped like tomatoes. Mater Magic's NPK is 8-5-5.

You also could feed every week or two with a water soluble fertilizer depending on how much rain you're getting. Anything from fish emulsion to liquid kelp would work, and I am very fond of Neptune's Harvest Plant Food because it comes in a variety of formulations. The one I use contains both liquid fish and liquid kelp. My soil is naturally high in minerals, being red clay soil that then has been highly amended with compost for many years, but I still can see the plants put on a growth spurt as soon as I feed them with Neptune's Harvest. They seem to love it.

If your plants really seem to be lagging in growth or fruitfulness, you always could use a synthetic water soluble tomato food like Miracle Grow's tomato version. It is a significantly higher NPK at 18-18-21 but many people (who don't mind that it isn't organic) seem to grow plenty of tomatoes with it and are happy with it. I used it regularly in our first 3 or 4 years here before I got our dense red clay improved enough that I felt like the plants could mainly feed off the soil itself and not need a lot of supplemental fertilizers. I felt like it gave our plants more foliage than I preferred but those plants also did produce a ton of fruit, so I cannot really complain about the plants' performance in those years. Still, preferring to be organic, I was happy to give up using the MG once the garden soil was better and I found that growing with less fertilizer still gave us plentiful fruit set without an overabundance of foliage. The advantage to using it back then (as would be the same now) is that it is easy to find in stores and it does work well. I used to have to travel a lot further to find organic fertilizers, but now they have them on the shelf in every store around us, like Home Depot, Lowe's, Wal-Mart, and TSC, so life has gotten easier for organic or mostly-organic gardeners.

I know that you are growing in an unexpected place, but you know what you are doing and I expect your plants will grow well for you this year. If not, tell us if they seem to be lagging in growth and performance and we'll try to come up with more ideas.

Dawn