Not watering seedlings is a recipe for dead seedlings and a repeat sale for the farmer. LOL! That being said, overwatering is the most common way of killing tomato plants. I assume the tomatoes are in pots? What size are the pots? If they are, they will need to be watered when the growing medium gets nearly dry. (The pot will feel signigicantly lighter.) Dig down with your finger about 4", is the growing medium wet, dry, or just right? If it is wet, don't water, if dry then water. If it is just right, check again the next day. Has the plant been hardened off? Are you putting it into the ground or a larger container? When planting in a container, it is best to use a minimum size of 5 gallons, and in the case of container tomatoes, bigger is definately better. use a soilless growing medium, not dirt from the yard or a bagged "garden soil" because it tends to compact in a pot and then it drains poorly and the tomato's roots will drown or suffocate and the plant will die. If you are planting in the ground, make sure the plant is hardened off first, then plant (preferably on a cloudy day) by setting the plant deeper into the soil than it was in the pot, especially if it is leggy. (You can find lots of information on planting.) It is usually not a good idea to add any amendments to the hole other than good compost. Many are ineffective and some have the potential to damage your tomato plant. As for fertilizing your tomato: Plants that are grown in any kind of container will need feeding more often than plants that are grown in the ground because each time they are watered, the water run off carries away vital nutrients. Many container growers will use a dilute solution of a liquid fertilizer every week or two depending on the condition of the plant. For in ground tomatoes, it is usually a good idea to fertilize the plants after fruit has been set with a balanced fertilizer such as 8-8-8 or 10-10-10 or one specifically made for tomatoes. It's often recommended to make the first feeding when the fruit is about one inch in size (smaller if they are cherry tomatoes) at the rate listed on the container your fertilizer comes in. Always keep fertilizer at least 8" from the stem, work it into the soil around the plant, but be careful not to cultivate it too deeply or you may damage and/or burn the roots of your tomatoes. You can repeat feeding every 4-6 weeks through out the growing season. The FAQ page linked below can give you more information on growing your tomatoes, even if it says from seeds, there is a lot of good basic information in there. I hope that helps. Betsy Here is a link that might be useful: How do I start tomatoes from seed?

Can you lead me in any direction of good reads on organic fertilizing? Organic fertilizing in general? Sure, we have a great Organic Gardening forum here. But the problems arise with organic fertilizing in containers. Fertilizing in containers has little in common with fertilizing in-ground.gardening - whether organics or synthetics - just as gardening in containers has little in common with in-ground gardening. Which is why I recommended the Container Gardening forum for the basics. Containers use different soil-less mixes (no dirt since it compacts in containers, doesn't drain well, and causes roots to rot), plants quickly become rootbound in containers (not a problem in the ground) which is why much BIGGER containers is recommended (10-15 gallons for the average tomato plant), plants in containers must be watered much more often than an in ground garden, and every time you water containers the nutrients leach out of the container. So container plants have to be fed regularly - weekly is common - and fed diluted mixes or nutrients based on the size of the containers. So using liquid organic fertilizers work much better than dry granular ferts. Organic fertilizers need bacteria and soil microbes and bugs to convert them to a form usable by the plants. Garden dirt contains them naturally but container mixes don't have those bacteria and such unless you add them to it and do so regularly. Some folks do it with compost and compost or manure teas, and some do it with one of the many liquid bacterial supplements available. So some reading about fertilizers on the Organic Gardening forum will be of help but keep in mind that you are working with containers so much of what in-ground gardeners recommend just work work for you. The Container Gardening forum does have some organic gardeners too however and they can help balance the two issues for you. Dave

It is hard to look at a photo and diagnose just from the photo because we lack context since we know nothing of the particular weather conditions or whatever that these plants have been exposed to. So, here's my best shot at giving you a valid answer: you cannot necessarily tell the difference if you are not experienced in seeing fertilizer burn, which I am not since I only use very mild, very gentle, very low-number organic fertilizers for tomato plants. I've never given my tomato plants enough fertilizer to harm them, and I'm over 60s years old and have been gardening since I was a child. What you do now is you leave your poor plants alone and let them recover. You're on the verge of what we experienced gardeners call "loving your plants to death", which basically refers to an overly attentive gardener trying too hard to do too much in too short of a time frame. Try to back off on everything except water and light and just let the plants be. Phosphorus deficiency is not uncommon on seedlings as young as yours. To be honest, if mine show that purpling early in their lives, I just ignore it because I know it will go away as they grow and become better able to take up and use the phosphorus in the soil. Often, the purple foliage early in their lives happens just because they are too immature to take up and use phosphorus efficiently when they are that small. Exposure to cooler temperatures (below 60 degrees) also can cause the purple discoloration and it goes away when the temperatures improve. Try to avoid overthinking and over-reacting, and try to avoid over-feeding your plants. I raise tomato seedlings from seed to transplant size (6 weeks) and only feed them once or twice during that six weeks, usually with something very low in NPK, like liquid seaweed or Neptune's Harvest (liquid seaweed plus kelp). My plants do fine on low-dose feedings, grow quickly once transplanted into the garden, and produce huge loads of fruit. When I was younger and fed them more often, I had huge plants that produced only moderate loads of fruit. I had to learn to leave them alone and to stop feeding them too much. Feeding them less, especially less nitrogen, gives me more fruit. Most soils (as least here in OK, if you are here in OK) have plentiful phosphorus so that is not even a concern once I put plants in the ground. Contrary to popular opinion, tomato plants do not have to be fed heavily, especially at a young age, in order to grow and do well. I see people do more harm to their plants with too many feedings than with not enough. Good luck with your plants.

IF tomato starts/seedlings need to be fertilized, it should be at a highly diluted rate. I don't fertilize starts at all unless they show signs of nutrient deficiency, which only happens if I leave them in their starter cells too long. When they go in the ground (I no longer bother to pot them up unless the weather is too cold for plant out and they're really stressed in the starter cells), I give them one dose of something with N like fish fertilizer or mix in a little granular balanced all-purpose fertilizer into the planting hole, and then I don't fertilize again until they start flowering and setting fruit, at which point, I start regular light fertilization with a formula for fruiting veg or tomatoes. Nothing needs to be tomato specific, but just because tomato formula is easy to find, I just use it for all my fruiting veg once they get to the flowering/fruiting stage. For plants that do well with more N, I just supplement the fruiting/tomato fertilizer with something cheap and readily available like fish fertilizer.