Smiling gardener does not sell it anymore and I am not sure where to buy it but mainly posting this link for learning purposes. There are some angles with applying foliar feed with liquid Ca that need to be understood before getting products http://www.smilinggardener.com/sale/n-p-k-fertilizer

Thanks for the link, I'll give it a read when I come in today.

Edit - just read through the article, very informative. The addition of dextrose is interesting. Isn't it sweet? I wonder if it would draw bugs. At any rate, too bad they don't sell it any more. I guess I'll go with the blossom end rot spray from gardens alive.

As the experts say, your soil often has enough calcium and the plants up take it too. The cause of BER is not necessarily calcium deficiency but fluctuation is soil moisture (inconsistent moisture) .
Another cause of BER can be varieties that are prone to to it. Plum and heart shape varieties ( like Roma) are more likely to get BER. That has been my only BER case with Roma.
Yet another problem often is in container growing. And the reason for that, I think, is inconsistent moisture, especially in smaller containers/ pots.

Seysonn

You will be surprised how much plants love simple sugars. If you check this guy's blog for other stuff, I have been using his formulas for foliar feed with great success. I usually apply fish fertilizer with EM and kelp with molasses - oh my... my plants were so velvety healthy looking. I just did it for my tomato seedlings and changes are notable within couple of hours. Molasses is The thing I use, but dextrose is better for that particular application for some reasons.

I'm setting up soaker hoses this year so maybe that will help solve the BER. I grow a lot of roma tomatoes but it seemed to me that the larger varieties had more difficulty. This is a whole new place with all new gardens - my old one had places with hard clay under sand which makes watering consistently tricky.

I'll have a another look at that blog. The addition of molasses is definitely interesting. I'm drawing a blank... what does the EM stand for?

Linda's most-likely referring to EM-1 Microbial Inoculant (Hi Linda!!).. It's an excellent product, and a good additive to diversify compost teas as well. Listen to her and Seysonn's advice.. they're right on target.. Genetics and inconsistent moisture are the main stars in the BER film. lol good luck! =)

Edit: Here's a link - EM-1 Inoculant

The original question asked about a source of foliar feed calcium. If you are in eastern Texas, you probably have hard water, so if you can use the tap when you want to spray something else, you will probably have a reasonable amount of calcium already in the water. I don't use any foliar feeds because I don't like wetting the leaves whenever I can help it, but we have a high humidity here all the time which leaves the leaves vulnerable to infection.

PC

Hi Michael! Nice to hear from you! Yep, that is the EM, love the stuff. I buy mother culture from SCD and ferment my own for a fraction of the price.

Pupilla, have not thought about water with Ca... I do run filter with hose and generally water minimally, we have enough rain usually with good mulch to last.

Calcium, in order to be available to plants, MUST be in ionic Ca++ form. Thus solids like eggshell, gypsum, lime are not going to be readily available UNTIL an UNLESS they are converted into ionic form. And that will be a long term process.

Seysonn

Lindalana and Seysonn,

To harden water (because I was using rainwater), last summer I used jingle shells. It worked fine. I hammered them in an old sack, and then acidified the powder with white vinegar. I added some fraction of tap water into the watering tub. It was a good excuse to go to the beach but if you want it's a good excuse to eat more eggs too.

If you don't weigh what you are doing though, you could end up wasting a lot of time. A gram of shell per gallon is all it takes to get pretty hard water. A decent portion of the calcium in tap water is usually available to plants.

PC

I hammered them in an old sack, and then acidified the powder with white vinegar. I added some fraction of tap water into the watering tub. It was a good excuse to go to the beach but if you want it's a good excuse to eat more eggs too.
****************************

PC, vinegar does it. I do that with both egg shell and dolomitic lime. The chemical process produces Calcium Acetate ( + CO2 + H2O), with calcium in Ca++ form.

Unless one has highly acidic soil, I doubt that calcium will be released from egg shell. I could be wrong.

Seysonn

It's looks like it's 6 of one, half dozen of the other. While egg shells will provide useable calcium with the help of saprophytes, they'll be ineffective with an immediate issue. Sorry to get slightly off topic here..

Check out the link:

http://www.compostjunkie.com/compost-eggshells.html

Seysonn,

Even in neutral or slightly basic soil, shells or lime will work. The popular claim that calcium won't be released from shells (mollusks or eggs), or even limestone sometimes is claimed ... false, it will.

It would be more accurate to say that just stuffing a few broken shells is pretty useless if you need to correct a large dificiency quickly.

Grinding it to a fine powder and you're good to go, with gradual release from day one, it just takes a little elbow grease. If there is an immediate need you could do a foliar spray of Bordeaux mixture.

Shell breakdown is accelerated by microorganisms unlike finely crushed limestone (agricultural lime) which is somewhat faster than eggshells. Eggshells in turn are somewhat faster than seashells, but not much.

This is why we can grow stuff in containers by using rainwater, dolomitic lime and Miracle Gro if we get it right. But as soon a pH gets too basic, that is above 8.0, calcium availability will quickly go downhill. Rainwater will dissolve it and doubly so since it is acidic, and has been the process for millions of years. Somewhere in a nice courtyard at at the Acropolis it would be nice to plant a tomato garden, and by eating the tomatoes bring a bit of the Acropolis back to life, especially with the acid rain in Athens now, which has accelerated in recent centuries due to further acidification from smog gases :-(

PC

PC, Thanks for your comments.

From my own experience, I have added egg shell to my compost pile and after nearly 6 months I have found them intact. Grinding all it does is to increase surface area nothing more and because of that we don't see the tiny particles thinking that they are broken down. . To me it is simple chemistry : Only acids can break down egg shell to Ca++ form. Lime is also known to take months to work in and raise pH.
YMMV

"Grinding all it does is to increase surface area nothing more and because of that we don't see the tiny particles thinking that they are broken down. . To me it is simple chemistry : Only acids can break down egg shell to Ca++ form. Lime is also known to take months to work in and raise pH.
YMMV"

Thanks for your thoughts too Seysonn.

No, the above is wrong to say only acids break down Calcium carbonate in eggshells. Acidity as we discussed helps. But:

Nature uses solubility, simple physics to provide calcium to plants. You have medium-hard water which is mostly from groundwater where you live. The water begins as distilled rain. It picks up (solubilizes) the calcium (and magnesium) ions that make its hardness by simple contact area integrated over contact time.This is how wild plants may naturally count on getting their calcium.

If you follow that, you can appreciate that it is precisely surface area*time that nature uses to make harder water in aquifers. This is similar to the effect to dissolving confectionary sugar vs. a huge lump of sugar.

Acid increases the potential, but does not act as a switch ... it is not necessary but pH should be 8 at most which will allow at least 40 ppm of ionic calcium in the rootzone water. Surface area directly increases contact time by large factors, and pulverizing additionally it breaks some of the microstructure of the shell which helps release it too.

Your municipal tap pH is approximately 8.0. If only acids could solubilize the Calcium carbonate (which is the compound in eggshells and limestone), you could not explain what the hardness was doing in your tap!

PC

Papillacharites, when consuming vinegar or lemon both of which are acidic they convert to akaline in the body. Do not know if this is the case with plants but it is with human consumption. Just a thought.

Calcium Carbonate , as in egg shell:
_________________________________
From wikipedia :

Calcium carbonate shares the typical properties of other carbonates. Notably:

• it reacts with strong acids, releasing carbon dioxide:

CaCO3(s) + 2 HCl(aq) → CaCl2(aq) + CO2(g) + H2O(l)

• it releases carbon dioxide on heating, called a thermal decomposition reaction, or calcination, (to above 840 °C in the case of CaCO3), to form calcium oxide, commonly called quicklime, with reaction enthalpy 178 kJ / mole:

CaCO3(s) → CaO(s) + CO2(g)

Calcium carbonate will react with water that is saturated with carbon dioxide to form the soluble calcium bicarbonate.
CaCO3 + CO2 + H2O → Ca(HCO3)2

This reaction is important in the erosion of carbonate rocks, forming caverns, and leads to hard water in many regions.

An unusual form of calcium carbonate is the hexahydrate, ikaite, CaCO3·6H2O. Ikaite is stable only below 6 °C.

-------------------------------------------------------

Conclusion:

The only way for Calcium carbonate to become soluble in water (witout acids) it needs CO2.

CaCO3 + CO2 + H2O → Ca(HCO3)2 =<<< Calcium Bicarbonate

Otherwise it needs acid to become water soluble in ionic form.

So what? Limiting your premises to two ideas out of context on wikipedia is going to get you into circular logic and can be misleading. Natural CO2 is a fact of life in environmentally available water. CaCO3 does not need CO2 specifically anyway, nor any acid to be soluble in trace amounts that plants can use though we already discussed that acidifying the water helps to dissolve large amounts of CaCO3. Solubility is a physical property. Solubility is influenced by pH/other ions present. That is all you can reasonably say. If you study how I might have made this estimate, we can discuss how to quantify calcium cation solubility in water for reasonable pH's:

ppm = SQRT(7.2 + 1.5E(11-pH))

If you substitute pH=8 you will see Ca+2 is about 40 ppm, so hopefully I haven't made a mistake on the back of this envelope the morning after ;-) (April 15).

PC

"Pupillacharites, when consuming vinegar or lemon both of which are acidic they convert to akaline in the body. Do not know if this is the case with plants but it is with human consumption. Just a thought."

Robin, I like where you are headed with that thought! I haven't studied the biochemistry of that either. We humans have to maintain slightly alkaline blood, and not lock up calcium in our kidneys without suffering painful consequences along with bad health.

Some foods we eat force our body to react. Foods that provoke a basic response(citrus, vinegar, spinach, broccoli, etc.), for example, I don't think are passively converted, it is the body responding to them. The body needs to walk a fine line between acidity, basicity, uric acid and calcium in the kidney so no uric acid crystalizes nor phosphates nor oxalates either. I think plants are a little like kidneys so I bet you are right. Maybe it isn't a coincidence that oxalate containing vegetables prefer less acidic or neutral soils :-)

PC

Off subject for a second but the typical American diet is acidic, and, you are right we need to be alkaline. Taking a teaspoon of vinegar in water before each meal will aid in the conversion toward alkalinity. So why isn't this possible with plants and that was my thought.

PC,
I have exhausted my resources on the subject. Thanks for your analysis.
You use your eggshell ground I will add vinegar to them and produce Calcium Acetate for quick knock. LOL

BTW: last year I made about half a gallon Calcium acetate

Dolomitic Lime + vinegar >>> Calcium Acetate + Water + carbon dioxide

Sey

Seysonn, never exhaust yourself from new and different information. I have found you to be very helpful and informative on the subject of tomatoes and have always respected your opinion. Like to throw out possible alternatives as far fetched as they may be.

Dr Carey Reams would be the person to study. Dr.Carey Reams

Lindalana, thanks for the website. Found the article to be very informative and much in line with my own research. Will look into this further.

This thread was quite an education, though some of it was over my head. Thanks everyone

When looking into Dr. Carey Reams one might also want to review for starters

http://skepdic.com/reams.html

and http://www.quackwatch.org/01QuackeryRelatedTopics/Tests/reams.html

Calcium Nitrate is a good source of calcium and nitrogen in ionic form when dissolved in water and can be applied as a foliar at the rate of 4 TBLS per gallon of water. Can be applied 2-3 times a week after second set of blossums have formed.

http://www.amazon.com/Greenway-Biotech-Inc-Fertilizer-Hydroponics/dp/B00K8DWXCC/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1430124936&sr=8-4&keywords=Calcium+Nitrate

Mlesenbacher, I could see where applying it for leafy veggies would be beneficial, but sheesh that big hit of nitrogen all at once- hmm, I do not see it using for my tomatoes unless there is reason I need it.

Dave, is not it interesting how aggressive and trashy that labeling of Dr Reams teaching was? Considering that most of patients to his nutritional clinics were people conventional medicine gave up, i.e. advanced stages of cancer and such, Dr Reams must have had some very promising results to scare all those $$$ hungry for profit pharmaceuticals...

As for me, I am biological gardener and follow Dr Reams legacies http://www.aglabs.com/carey-reams.html

My gardens look better, produce more, food taste better and brix going higher. Whats there not to like?

"Calcium Nitrate is a good source of calcium and nitrogen in ionic form when dissolved in water and can be applied as a foliar at the rate of 4 TBLS per gallon of water"

This is terrible advice for tomatoes and sounds like it could have been taken from some article from a media communitions writer on SF Gate who doesn't know diddly squat about tomatoes.

Even for withering leaf tips and margins caused specifically by calcium issues or BER for which there is likely an underlying cause and if there is a problem you don't settle it by running out turning your tomato plants into foie grassed goose liver. Giving more instant nitrogen is likely to hurt yield and makes vines at best.

You really need to balance the plants diet better if these sort of calcium problems surface, and if you want calcium just add dolomitic lime ($4 for a 50 pound sack) mix a tablespoon of dolomitic lime crushed with a tablespoon of vinegar, then updiltued into a gallon of water, to the soil right away. To the soil alternately, a beneficial boost of bone meal (in moderation to keep phosphorus in balance) or Tomato-Tone -even better- as soon as you can fertilize next.

Adding calcium nitrate as recommended by the quoted part, agree with lindalana, for heaven's sake can be unhealthy and cause more nutrient lockouts. If you go that route, at least use cal-mag 2 tablespoons per gallon maximum, but really less is better since the ratio of calcium and magnesium is more important than calcium itself.

At these rates you are looking for trouble and foliar calcium nitrate or even calmag should be the very last resort (meaning almost never). Calcium chloride at a teaspoon per gallon is more effective in a foliar spray if going this route, but use distilled water you can buy from the supermarket for under a buck a gallon to make the spray and if you have high sodium in your irrigation water it wouldn't be recommended either.

PC

Well said PC. I believe it was Aristotle who first said "moderation in all things best serves the cause". Be that trying to equate the human body to a tomato plant, a highly questionable 'school of thought' in organic gardening, or a single particular source of information.

Each can choose but there is no one size or method that fits and applies to all. And some common sense needs to play a role too. The proven fact that millions of tons of tomatoes are grown annually (many of them organically) by millions of growers without resorting to such far out philosophies and methods as are discussed in this thread should at least serve as a cautionary wake-up call.

Dave

I am still a bit skeptic on the whole subject "Foliar Feedin"..
I propose that maybe the benefit come from what ends up on the ground and eventually feeds the root system. It is so obvious to me that most of what is sprayed as foliar feeding just wets the leaves surface which take a minuet amount of liquid to do that. I can imaging a drip is enough to wet a leaf. .
To do a semi scientific experiment one should do:

-- one plant's ground/soil top is fully sealed off so nothing goes into the soil.
-- Second plant is sprayed as people normally do,
-- Third plant is not sprayed at all.
Then you can probably make a judgement based on observation and any measurable differences.

Sey

Seysonn, somewhat simple explanation in regards to foliar feeding- plants have savings account and checking account, soil might be rich on nutrients but those will be unavailable to plants. Common soil test you get from local extensions usually show only savings account. Whether plant has a bit of cash to use now it is different story. And some soils are heavy on CD account but not happy to share now.

Foliar feeds are meant to help plants to get some cash here and now and they do it exactly by absorbing via leaves, which as some experiments show about 20 times more effective than root feeding.

It would be too simplistic to think that plants can take nutrients only in ionic form, they sure can use complex molecules as well but it is relationship between minerals that makes difference. As PC mentioned above it is not only Ca amount, it is relationship between Ca and Mg which should be ideally around 7 to 1 and P to K 4 to 1 or 4 to 2 which help to release nutrients. So foliar feeds might just give that boost and change balance to the healthy side- i.e. get you some cash influx to live by till your savings account gives better dividends LOL

Very good analogy Linda. That helped me understand much better.