garden tip: eggshells

Here’s a garden tip for you: hold on to those (pastured, happy) eggshells as you use them around this time of year. As you plant or transplant your tomato plants, crumble up a eggshell and put it at the bottom of the hole for your tomato plant. Blossom end rot is a disease most common in tomatoes and peppers that is caused by a calcium deficiency, and eggshells have plenty of calcium. Crumbling them up and putting them at the bottom of the hole that you put your plants in ensures that the plant can easily soak up the calcium from the eggshells.

Throughout the year, of course, you should throw those eggshells in your compost bin, but I always try to set them to the side during planting season, so that I can put a shell or two in the bottom of each of my tomato plants (and pepper plants too if I have enough).