Tomatoes- Heirloom (or Not) for Southern IN zone 5

[Smiles Jr.]

I hope I'm not stealing Marshal's fire here but this is how I ash my egg shells.

1. I always hand crush the shells as soon as they are cracked for cooking.
2. We have an egg shell can in the kitchen just for the crushed shells.
3. I rinse the crushed shells often as they will smell bad within a week.
4. I dump the small container from the kitchen into a 5 gal bucket in the barn.
5. When the bucket is near full I use a homemade "stick blender" to pulverize the shells.
6. My blender will make the shells into a coarse powder.
7. I have a very old cracked 10 gal. castiron cauldron that I put on top of an outdoor turkey fryer burner.
8. I dump the shell dust into the kettle and allow them to "cook" until to smell is unbearable. :/
9. I use a branch to stir the shells about once every 5 minutes. The stench will remind you.
10. When the shell dust is totally black and the smoke has all but disappeared I know it's done.
11. When cool I pour the black dust into another 5 gal. pail and cover until spring planting time.
12. Usually in early March I start my seeds indoors. I put one teaspoon of the egg ash into each of my saved Yogurt starter cups. I mix this with my homemade sawdust/compost starter soil.
13. When I have hardened off the plants and I'm ready to put them out in the garden, I mix two tablespoons of my secret tomato concoction (see recipe below) in the hole where the plant will go. Blend into soil well to minimize the possibility of root burn. Plant the sets deeper than you think you should - they'll be hardy plants by the end of July.
14. I like to water my young tomato plants sparingly every day for the first two weeks. Just enough water to moisten the soil but not wet.
15. 4 to 5 weeks (depending on amount of rain) after setting my plants out I side dress each plant with one cup of my secret concoction.
16. Since my garden(s) are a good way from any water spigot they are pretty much on their own from 5 weeks on.

Secret concoction recipe: (I'm typing quietly so nobody will hear the secrets)
2 gal. bucketfull of eggshell ash
3 C. bonemeal
1 C. Epson salts
6 packets of Goody's headache powder (I like to support the little guy)
1/4 C. 10-10-10 fertilizer
Mix all together well in a 5 gal. pail. Blend 2 T. into the soil at planting time. Side dress tomato plants w/ 1/2 C. at approx. 5 weeks.

Please understand that I have BER occasionally but since I have started my little routine outlined above the BER has reduced to almost none.

Awwwww man! Now my secret is out. I'm doomed.

 

[897tgigvib]

That's some serious eggshell ashing!

 

[hiker125]

Thanks, Smiles and Marshall.

One last question about ashing the eggshells- Is the smell so bad that I should NOT attempt it in my suburban backyard? I am already doing a lot of uhum, shall we say, stealth gardening- with my chickens, bees and front yard veggie gardening. Will this be finally push my neighbors over the edge?

 

[897tgigvib]

You can cook the crushed shells of maybe 10 eggs in your frying pan. Cook on high until they are brown.

The stink will go away in about 6 hours if you have all your windows wide open, and all fans turned on.

A simpler mix is to pour your well browned crushed eggshells into a 5 pound box of Bone Meal and mix it by shaking.

We have us a huge forest fire about 35 miles to the north, a rapidly growing new Oak forest fire about 20 miles to the south, a large wildland fire about 50 miles northeast, and another Oak forest fire about 40 miles to the east. So far we are clear to the west! In 2008 we were surrounded by forest fires.

 

[catjac1975]

As for the fires-Yikes-you sound so calm about it!
Do the egg shells have to be heated like that? Will they not do their job just crushed?
And smiles-5 GALLONS OF EGG SHELLS?

 

[Jared77]

I was thinking that myself fires no joke!

Id love to do this, but we just don't eat that many eggs here....grrr

 

[Smiles Jr.]

I should have included information on the amount of egg shells we get. Our little flock of chickies would never provide enough eggs for my eggshell cooking program. We have friends who run a bed-n-breakfast and a mom-n-pop restaurant that, both, save shells for us. Many times we have too many shells for my stinky cooking needs so then we just pile them into the compost pile.

Hiler - you shouldn't have to worry about the neighbors and smell - it's not that bad.