Re: [gardeners] Saturday gardening
Margaret Lauterbach (gardeners@globalgarden.com)
Wed, 27 May 1998 06:31:11 -0600
At 12:32 AM 5/27/98 -0400, you wrote:
>Margaret, would you please explain to the uninitiated how one
>uses eggshells in the chili holes...?
>
>Penny, NY zone 6
>
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I use one teaspoon of crushed eggshells in each planting hole for tomatoes
and each for chile peppers to provide extra calcium. Last year I ran
short, and mentioned it to my dentist, who arranged for a small restaurant
to save eggshells for me. I had to pick them up every other day because
the restaurant was refrigerating them (there's a little residue of the
white part of the egg in several of the shells, and they didn't want to
smell rotten eggs). I crushed them, and got a large jar full, about 1/2
gallon. Thought that was enough, but either I was overly generous with the
shell bits or it's due to my planting more tomatoes and more chiles, but I
did run out of crushed eggs before I had finished planting either the
chiles or the tomatoes.
Some people I know put spent matches (for phosphorus) in the planting
holes, as well as banana skins (potassium), either fresh or dried and
pulverized. It may all be a bit of magic, but that's the way I plant
chiles and tomatoes. Margaret