Friends,
Many of us are hardening off or planting our tomato plants. As you can see we have been saving our egg shells to give our plants a good calcium boost. Not only are these great for tomatoes, but the are also great for your peppers and eggplant as well.
One of the biggest issues for the beginner gardener is a calcium deficiency in the soil. This typically results in bottom rot. Bottom rot is those nasty looking black masses at the bottom of your tomatoes.
Here is what I do with a few variations:
When we break our eggs for breakfast, we rinse them and set them aside to dry. Some folks will go one step further and bake them dry in a low setting oven. I skip this step, but if you plan on feeding your egg shells back to your chickens, go ahead and bake them dry.
Next I crush them in my hands until I get the consistency in the upper left pan.
If you have a mortar and pestle use this to grind the shells into a powder. This could be a little work, but consider it therapy because you will be working some muscles you might not have used in a while. If not, you can use a blender to grind them into a powder.
I then store them in an old coffee can until ready to use. Speaking of coffee, some folks will add used, dry coffee grounds to the powder.
When I transplant my tomato plants, I add a small handful of egg shell powder to the hole and mix it in real good. I then add another handful to top dress around each plant every few weeks during production.
Although egg shells have an abundance of calcium carbonate, they also offer dozens of other micro-elements. Some folks are even using eggshell powder as a dietary supplement. If you want additional information on this topic, do a little research in your favorite search engine.
As always, feel free to share this with others. It may save them a little grief in dealing with bottom rot.
Happy Growing My Friends
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