How to get rid of Blossom-End Rot on your Tomatoes:
CALCIUM and VINEGAR is your cure! When I was a rookie gardener, one of the first things I grew was tomatoes. I made a lot of rookie mistakes, but I also (eventually) had enough tomatoes for salads and salsa! I remember thinking I had bought big tomatoes for sandwiches, just to find out when they started growing that I had actually grown cherry tomatoes, and when they first came in, by the time they were ripe, half of the tomato looked like it had been dipped in acid that had eaten half of it! We used a handy app called “Plantum” to find out we had… You guessed it: blossom-end rot?!?! I was so disappointed, so I set off to research what could be done to correct the issue. How do I get rid of blossom-end rot? A lack of calcium uptake into the root system was the root cause — but how do I get calcium into my raised container garden? I really didn’t want to put a bunch of chemicals into my food. After some thrifty internet researching, I found a great solution — egg shells! We were a young family with a single income and two boys that were starting to eat us out of house and home. We were renting (hence the container garden), and simply didn’t have a lot of disposable income! But we had egg shells! And conveniently I had vinegar as well. Turns out if you save your egg shells (you know the ones you habitually throw away after making your scrambled eggs, omelets, or eggs over easy) and you dry them out in your oven, crush them up (nothing fancy — a freezer bag and fingers or a rolling pin), and finally soak a capful of the “dust” in a teaspoon of vinegar for about an hour or two before adding that capful to a gallon of water, you can use that water to feed your bed, and voila, you will resolve your rot, and end up with lovely tomatoes for the rest of the season. What were those steps again?
- Save your egg shells
- Bake at 200 degrees for about half an hour (the goal is to dry them out)
- Crush them into as fine a dust as possible (it worked fine when I broke them down by hand, but you can also use a coffee grinder or other mechanical grinder)
- Put 1-2 tsp into a small container with 1-2 tsp of distilled white vinegar
- Add the above solution into a gallon jug of water
- Mix well, then water your plants!
Enjoy your beautiful delicious tomatoes that are not half rotted away! This also works for container grown peppers and other fruits that are susceptible to blossom end root rot.
If you are looking for garden equipment or are interested in learning more about how you can grow your family’s health yourself in your own yard or on your own patio, porch, or even inside, head on over to GrowHealthYourself.com!