Near harvest I myself like to stress the plant, make it think it's going to die. That way it puts everything in the fruit. Works well. I limit water, and nutrients. But hey that's me! Amazing cool with stone fruits, you can boost brix by 5 points or more. With indeterminate tomatoes I really do not do it. But it seems like a good idea with determinates. With indeterminates I usually lower nitrogen once fruit is formed. At times I may boost it like with cherry tomatoes that really run nutrients through. Often producing hundreds of tomatoes on one plant. It needs to be fed. Fruits usually do not form during very hot weather so it's a good time for nitrogen. When conditions are right for fruit formation, I do limit feedings. Dry farming is a science, and these techniques are based on dry farming practices.

Don't be so sure your fruit is set. I'm experimenting on thinning to avoid the June Drop but I don't have the feeling that we're there yet, the tree I haven't thinned hasn't dropped. I'm not a fan of fertilizer for trees. With as wet as this year is my leaves are showing they could use a foliar feeding of iron. But other than special problems like that we tend to either have a lot of very rich clay or rich clay under great topsoil. The only place I've been in IL that has been an exception to that was when I lived in a river valley and the sand was very deep. But even that sand was pretty fertile, in fact the melons from south of there are well known. The glaciers were good to us, that's why it's a farm state. Even if your in a development stripped of topsoil clay is better than people think and ours is better yet.

nyssaman, thank you for visiting and I'm so sorry I don't ship plant material up north as the restrictions are more than I want to deal with. You have some awesom growers up there and some can be found here. I have shipped seeds up there but the last batch to a friend took a month and a half so I'm a little gun shy now. The first year I would do the 20-20-20 and allow the plant to get a root system that can support the pushing in year two. Then I would bump up to the numbers to do growth and blooms.

now i hear that a good dose of nitrogen at fruiting time is very beneficial, if this is true Can you clarify what you heard and where? That statement is open to multiple interpretations. "Good dose" can mean many things and so can "at fruiting time". Personally I feed my plants with a well balanced fertilizer AFTER first fruit set. That promotes additional new growth which will lead to additional blooms and fruit and doesn't interfere with the fruit that has already set. I feed them again approx. 6 weeks later (since plants run in approximately 6 week cycles) assuming the weather has been co-operative. I use fertigation with one of the many good organic balanced fertilizers mixed in and some mild foliar feedingswith compost tea as the need arises. But I would never feed them with only a high nitrogen fertilizer at any time. As Zackey said - that gets you big bushy dark green plants with few blooms and/or fruit. Dave