Too much nitrogen causes plants to become spindly with frail stems. As the foliage continues to grow abundantly, the weak stems become less able to support the plant. Additionally, root growth is stunted, which leads to even less plant support. Eventually, the plant dies because it can no longer support itself.

Dig organic materials into your soil to raise the pH level and help to neutralize excess nitrogen. Good choices include hardwood ash, crushed marble, bone meal and oyster shell.

Add mulch to your soil, and stop fertilizing if you want to reduce the amount of nitrogen in your soil. Mulch uses up nitrogen as it breaks down, so applying a layer of dried wood or sawdust in high-nitrogen parts of your garden can suck up nitrogen. Nitrogen also leaches out of soil naturally.

Add Brown Organic Matter to Your Soil Nitrogen toxicity usually occurs in natural soil. Adding brown organic matter to the soil can reverse the problem. Organisms that live in soil use a lot of nitrogen to break down this organic matter, thereby removing excess nitrogen from the soil.

Without enough nitrogen, plant growth is affected negatively. With too much nitrogen, plants produce excess biomass, or organic matter, such as stalks and leaves, but not enough root structure. In extreme cases, plants with very high levels of nitrogen absorbed from soils can poison farm animals that eat them [3].

Tomatoes do need nitrogen for proper growth. According to the University of Missouri Extension: “Tomato plants low in nitrogen appear stunted and spindly with a yellowish cast to the leaves. Too much nitrogen creates excessive vine growth, twisted foliage, delayed flowering and lower yield.”

Treatment. One treatment for nitrogen overdose is to put only a small amount of fertilizer around the plant shortly after you’ve planted it. The fertilizer should have a 0 reading in the first number of its N-P-K ratio. This indicates there isn’t nitrogen in that fertilizer.

When fruit does form on tomato plants, too much nitrogen in the surrounding soil may contribute to some physiological disorders in the tomatoes. An imbalance of calcium and other soil nutrients leads to this common problem, characterized by a sunken, leathery, dark spot at the blossom end of the fruit.

Tomatoes typically need a lot of potassium. Recommendations call for up to 225 pounds per acre. Phosphorus requirement is about 150 pounds per acre and nitrogen application rate would be 100 pounds per acre.

Nutrient Requirements for Tomatoes As with all plants, tomatoes need three primary nutrients: nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. These are the nutrients your plants will use in the highest quantity and the ones that are included in most fertilizers.

Types of organic fertilizer that are high in nitrogen include animal-based fertilizers such as blood meal, poultry or feather meal, fish meal, kelp meal, bone meal and crab and shrimp meal. Composted manure can be tilled into the first few inches of soil to ensure that the root system receives the much-needed nitrogen.

When fertilizing tomato plants, be careful that you don’t use too much nitrogen. This will result in a lush, green tomato plant with very few tomatoes. If you have experienced this problem in the past, you may even want to consider simply providing phosphorus to the plant instead of a complete fertilizer for tomatoes.

Instantly Add Nitrogen to Your Garden Soil

1. Blood Meal or Alfalfa Meal. One option to quickly add nitrogen to your garden soil is to use blood meal.
2. Diluted Human Urine.
3. Manure Tea.
4. Compost.
5. Chop-and-Drop Mulch.
6. Plant Nitrogen-Fixing Plants.
7. Stop tilling.
8. Polyculture.

Epsom salts are known to be beneficial to some plants in some situations. Primarily, roses, tomatoes, and peppers are the key plants that can take advantage of the magnesium levels contained in Epsom salts.

Crops that attract snails such as basil, cabbage, lettuce, marigolds and strawberries will certainly benefit from a sprinkle of eggshells onto their soil. Plants that tend to like coffee grounds include hydrangeas, gardenias, azaleas, lilies, ferns, camellias and roses.

Epsom salt works to kill weeds because it’s magnesium sulfate. When you introduce magnesium sulfate to plants, you prevent the plant from taking in other essential nutrients such as calcium.