Question
we used to have a beautiful vegetable garden until 2 years ago my husband dumped a big bucket of horse manure on it and since then the tomotoe plants get big and leafy but the fruit does not ripen. I tested the soil(think I did it right) and the only thing its says is the potash is low
Does this sound right or what should we do with our fruitless garden


Answer
First thing, Gale, we must learn how to spell Tomato.

Dan Quayle and you have a little bit in common.  He cannot spell Potato(e).  You cannot spell Tomato(e).  Now you know.  No 'e' in Tomato OR Potato.

Sorry I could not resist... Forgive me!

This is not a laughing matter.  Your poor husband, out there with the horse manure, trying to be helpful, and now this.

Easy to fix.

You shall have TomatoEs this year.

(note the 'e' in the plural only)

Horse Manure is almost always an outstanding food supplement for your soil and anything you grow in it.  The N-P-K breakdown is .70-.25-.77.  Generally we like to "age" the Manure for a year to keep it from burning vegetation.

Let's see what George Carver, esteemed Agricultural Researcher at Tuskegee Institute, Alabama, wrote in his 1936 book, 'How to Grow the Tomato and 115 Ways to Prepare it for the Table' (http://plantanswers.tamu.edu/recipes/carvertomato.html):

'The tomato is not at all choice in the kind of soil in which it grows; in fact, almost any well-drained soil can be made to produce good tomatoes ... It shows a preference for a light, loamy soil; and, if very early tomatoes are desired, the soil must be only moderately rich, as a highly fertile soil produces large vines and more fruit, which is likely to delay ripening of the tomatoes.'

Let's read that again: '...HIGHLY FERTILE SOIL produces large vines and more fruit, which is likely to DELAY RIPENING ...'

Hmmmmm.

FYI:  We almost always expect raw Manure to tip the soil fertility scales instantly.  Horse Manure is an extreme fertilizer filled with Nitrogen and Potassium (Potash).  Excess Phosphate will make it almost impossible for anything you try to grow to get enough Copper and Zinc.  Some authorities believe that excess Potash ties up Boron, Manganese and Magnesium.  A Magnesium-starved plant will suffer from retarded growth with pale yellow leaves; new shoots may appear yellow and spotted.

Other authorities maintain that Tomatoes, Potatoes, and other crops are very sensitive to the side effects of Manure even if it is aged; it must be mixed into the soil and there should be a delay in its use.

Potash (Potassium) deficiency for a Tomato would have certain symptoms:  browning and curling at the leaf tips, yellowed leaf veins; sometimes purple spots under the leaves.  Strangely enough, one of the "cures" for this is Horse Manure.  Go figure.

Bottom line: I agree with your theory that the problems all began with your well intended Horse Manure fertilizer program.  Two years later, I think you have less to worry about.  But a genuine, honest to goodness soil test is what you need -- not a diy version, but one done by a soil scientist who does this for a living and can give you a lot of information.  Let me know if you need to know where to go for that.

If you did get one of those, Gale, would you please forward the data in a followup and let me look it over?  This is all about the numbers; the night is young, the days are long, you can do this.  RSVP