Tomatoes - Preventing Blossom End Rot

Tomato plants love calcium.  Have you ever had a lovely tomato plant loaded with tomatoes only to have those tomatoes start to rot on the bottom end?  That is blossom end rot, a sign that your tomato plants need calcium.  I am not big on commercial fertilizers and do not use pesticides on my garden.  I prefer to try to prevent blossom end rot rather than treat it.  Eggshells are great sources of calcium.  With all of my chickens, I have plenty of eggshells.

 

You can find various methods of how to use eggshells on your tomato plants.  This is simply the way that I do it.  I wash the eggshells and allow them to dry.  Eggshells tend to get a bit smelly if they are not washed.

 

 

Once dry you can put them in a container to store them until needed. 

 

 

Storing them whole, as seen above, takes up a bunch of room.  This is fine if you are only planting a couple of tomato plants.  I plant many so I crush the eggshells to save on space.

 

 

Now how do you use these eggshells?  When I dig a hole to plant the tomato plant, I add a good handful of shells to the bottom of the hole.  This gets the shells and all their calcium right to the root of the tomato plant and prevents blossom end rot from occurring.