How to add calcium to garden for tomatoes?

How do I put more calcium in our garden for the tomatoes

Hi Brett, I use oyster shell in the planting mix as well as making various compost and weed based teas and vinegar extractions. Based on Nigel Palmer’s “Regenerative Soil Amendments”, if plants are already in the ground, I make an apple cider or white wine vinegar extraction with oyster shell, leftover bones, or calcium accumulator weeds (dock, sheep sorrel, dandelion, plantain). You can do a water based weed tea as well but it will smell pretty bad before its ready. Mix this to irrigation water at 500:1 to 1500:1, which can be done with hose end, syphon, or in line mixers.

I’ve also read that water stress and poor soil aeration from overwatering can contribute to calcium deficiency and then blossom end rot, as ample oxygenated water is necessary to carry the calcium from soil to and through the plant. Tomatoes like deep, infrequent watering. Dynamic accumulators like comfrey and borage near by that wilt just a bit before the tomatoes will can help avoid excessive dryness and overly frequent watering, and the support plants bounce back once watered with the tomatoes.

Good compost and compost extracts and teas will also make calcium more available, as the microbes mine sediments and recycle nutrients to make less inputs necessary. Hope this helps.

I put eggshells, mussel shells, and bones into stainless steel pans and stick them in the fire. They come out nice and crumbly, so then I just pound the material down to sand-like consistency and top-dress the garden beds with it.

Phil’s method seems good to me as well. Calcium is reported to remain in charred material quite well.

Hi Brett,

Are these tomatoes you're direct seeding into a garden bed?
Or do you start the tomatoes in pots and then transplant?
What sort of an ecosystem are you in?

What I do - most years at least: I make my own compost and I don't shy away from putting animal bones (we raise chickens/ducks/geese and a friend hunts deer) in the compost. I use my compost along with some soil and coir (to hold moisture) to fill over-height paper pots (aiming for 3" soil depth). However, before I put soil in the pots, I sprinkle about a Tablespoon of crushed eggshell in the bottom. Since "transplanting" really means digging a narrow 4-5" deep hole and dropping the paper pot into it, the eggshell goes with the tomato plant. However, if slug pressure is high, I also surround the plants with crushed eggshell. I've heard conflicting reports of whether it discourages slugs or not, but it seems to help in my ecosystem. Even if you're top watering, I'm not sure those eggshells will do much, although if your soil has lots of worms, they may move the eggshell deeper into the soil.

However, I also burn bones in our wood-stove and many of these charred bones then go through the compost pile as well.

Also, I'm getting the impression that the most important factor is having a healthy soil biome. That requires getting your plants started in compost without artificial fertilizers, so the plants learn to play nice with the microbes from the start. (so I don't use "sterilized potting soil" which many experts tell you to use). There are many ecosystems where direct seeding into a no-till garden is the best way to go, but we get a weather pattern called "Junuary" - cloudy, cold night, weather in June which is perfect for growing mold, and not enough warm weather before then to direct seed. If we plant early July, we won't likely get enough warm weather before heavy dews tend to bring the fall molds. Short answer, lots of green tomatoes unless you have a greenhouse!

So this is definitely not a "one right answer" question. Certainly adopting lots of bones from people who hunt or raise animals organically, biocharing those bones, then digging a trench in your garden in the fall and putting the biochar in and adding a cover crop over them to attract the worms is something I would do if we didn't already generally have enough. (I often find worms living among plant roots in the winter here, and not in the open soil. I don't speak "worm" well enough to ask them why, so I'm just guessing they consider the roots their "home".)

These are established plants from transplant

Brett, do you know your soil's PH?

To get the most benefit for adding calcium the PH would be 6.0 to 6.5.

If your PH is within that range you can add bone meal or compost.

I would use the compost if you have some.

I also believe that I have read that egg shells can be added to water.  20 egg shells to a gallon of water left to sit overnight and you will have a nice tea to water those tomatoes with.

I had a bag of leftover powered milk and have been adding that to the tomatoes. You add water to make it into liquid milk.

I have been adding dolomite lime (cal mag) to my compost tea. Haven’t seen any blossom end rot since I started doing this. I also epsom salt (mag sul) and langbeinite (potassium mag sul).

As I understand it, calcium disseminating into the soil is generally a slow process as most sources are not water soluble. The only water soluble form according to https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/garden-how-to/soil-fertilizers/calcium-nitrate-fertilizer.htm is calcium nitrate. It is not organic, but it does not seem to have the negative effects of many synthetic fertilizers. The calcium and the nitrate are both used by plants rather than leaving something to accumulate in the soil.

Jordan Holland wrote:As I understand it, calcium disseminating into the soil is generally a slow process as most sources are not water soluble. The only water soluble form according to https://www.gardeningknowhow.com/garden-how-to/soil-fertilizers/calcium-nitrate-fertilizer.htm is calcium nitrate. It is not organic, but it does not seem to have the negative effects of many synthetic fertilizers. The calcium and the nitrate are both used by plants rather than leaving something to accumulate in the soil.

Finely ground dolomite is water soluble.. try it.

Thanks everyone for all your input. This was for my step mom an she is going with baking egg and oyster shells pound them into a powder al.ost an let earth decide the rest. But I am so tha kful for the group of permies people I can ask an I no they'll be a ton of info coming back my way thanks to all an to all a good life tootaloo everyone

egg and oyster shells, dolomite, limestone are all calcium carbonate.  It is insoluble in water and therefore unavailable to plants. calcium carbonate is a base (alkaline) and it needs to react with an acid.  The result of the acid-base reaction is a salt that is typically water soluble and thus plant available.  The acid can be produced(gradually) by soil microbes, or similarly  by the bacteria that produce vinegar, or can be practically any available acid, even club soda, or water aerated long enough for CO2 in the air to dissolve and react. This makes “bicarbonate” aka hydrogen-carbonate which is water soluble. (It’s how those cave features stalactites and stalagmites are formed).  Roasting in a very hot fire could make calcium oxide. (Process used in cement making). This reacts with water to make slaked-lime (calcium hydroxide). Water soluble and very alkaline. Over time it will absorb CO2 from air and revert to carbonate.

You could try this method:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sU5TXvjsTv8