Can we talk about the one weird trick that fixed my tomato plants?

Last summer I had a real problem with my tomato plants getting all yellow and sickly. A guy at the local nursery in Austin told me to try putting crushed eggshells in the planting hole. I thought it was some old wives tale but I was desperate so I tried it with half my plants. The ones with eggshells grew way better and had almost no blossom end rot compared to the other half. I used about 3 crushed shells per plant and it cost me nothing since I just saved them from breakfast. Has anyone else tested this with different vegetables or am I just getting lucky?

3 comments

3 Comments

holly_reed5520d ago

Last year I tried the eggshell thing on my bell peppers and ended up with shells so big they looked like I was growing peppers in a gravel pit. My neighbor laughed at me and said I needed a mortar and pestle, not just my bare hands and some wishful thinking. I finally got them fine enough by putting them in a ziploc bag and running over them with my car, which is probably NOT the method anyone else would recommend. But hey, it worked and the peppers were actually pretty good, so I guess my driveway diplomacy paid off.

hugoj1220d ago

Used to think the whole eggshell thing was just internet hype but holly_reed55 your car method honestly cracked me up and kinda changed my mind. I tried grinding them in an old coffee grinder last season and it worked way better than I expected, just had to run it a couple extra times to get dust instead of tiny shards. My tomatoes seemed happier with that fine powdery calcium boost compared to the chunky mess I made the year before.

evan_green5220d ago

The eggshells help with calcium but you gotta crush them really fine, almost to powder, for them to break down fast enough.