Should You Give Tomato Plants Aspirin? 5 Weird Tomato Hacks Gardeners Swear By

If you've spent any time searching the internet for ways to boost your tomato plant harvest or ward off disease, you've likely encountered some recommendations that seem a bit ... extreme. Fish heads? Banana peels? Human hair? Here, we've rounded up the most commonly recommended natural additives, and asked one of the country's top tomato-growing experts, Frank Hyman, to weigh in on what works and what doesn't.

Unconventional Things People Feed Their Tomatoes

Fish Heads

Some gardeners swear by burying frozen pieces of fish several inches below their tomatoes at planting time. As the fish decays, it releases nitrogen, calcium, and nitrogen—all beneficial nutrients for tomatoes. Many use the heads or tails, which usually otherwise go to waste, but any piece of fish will do.

Dry Milk

To keep tomato plants healthy, some gardeners turn to dry milk under the belief that the calcium can prevent problems like blossom-end rot. Some sprinkle it around the base of tomato plants and water in; others spray a diluted dry milk mixture onto leaves in hopes of heading off powdery mildew.

Pasta Water

Waste not, want not? It's common to hear of gardeners pouring their pasta water over the soil around their tomato plants instead of down the drain. The idea is that the starch and trace amounts of iron, magnesium, and calcium act as a fertilizer.

Banana Peels

Still other gardeners believe the potassium in banana peels can yield big benefits to tomato plants. Some bury the peels with their tomatoes at planting time; others soak banana peels in water, and then pour that around the base of plants.

Aspirin

Can aspirin be a cure-all for tomato problems? Some gardeners think so, spraying a diluted solution (usually one crushed uncoated 325 mg aspirin to 1 gallon water) onto their tomato plants. The thinking is that the salicylic acid in the aspirin wards off bacteria that can cause disease.

What a Tomato Expert Says About These Additives

"Pasta water, fish heads, banana peels, and dry milk powder all have nutrients that tomato plants need to grow," says Hyman. The catch? "They don’t have anything that an organic fertilizer and lime don’t have." Since organic fertilizer is already formulated to provide the nutrients tomatoes need— including nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium, and more—it's much more efficient to add this than to play around with individual additives from the kitchen.

Hyman points out that there are better ways to use these additives. Banana peels, for example, can be great additives to the compost bin, where "they'll decompose to create feed for garden soil microbes and their nutrients will still be available for the tomato plant roots to absorb," he says.  Even fish heads and dry milk powder can be added to the compost—provided you bury them "deep enough in the compost not to stink things up and attract vermin," he says.

As for aspirin spray, Hyman says this: "Some early research indicates that regular spraying of tomato leaves—before they have disease—could reduce problems for tomatoes," says Hyman. "To be effective, the spraying would have to continue every two weeks, or your effort could be wasted."

The Bottom Line

You're certainly not hurting your tomatoes by adding these things to the soil—but you are creating unnecessary work for yourself. "The best thing for tomatoes is any organic fertilizer and some lime as directed by a soil test from your local agricultural extension office," says Hyman. "That office wants to help gardeners and farmers raise the most tomatoes with the least hassle and cost."