An eggshell contains about 95% calcium carbonate. The remaining 5% is comprised of calcium phosphate, magnesium carbonate, and proteins. Because tomato plants have a tendency towards blossom-end rot, increasing the calcium level in the soil can help the plant avoid that disease.

As an added bonus, eggshells help deter cats from the garden as the shells irritate their paws. Slugs, cutworms, and snails will also be discouraged from bothering your garden due to the sharpness of the eggshell pieces.

The following techniques will show you how to use eggshells for healthier tomato plants and have the best growing tomatoes you can:

1) put a handful of crushed eggshells at the bottom of your planting hole

2) you can use crumbled eggshells in the soil as you till it

Many gardeners boil the eggshells and then use a rolling pin to crush them. If you prefer a fine powder, you can grind them in your blender. Boiling should remove any bacteria. The mucous membrane can be removed or not. If the membrane is left on, it will provide extra nutrients for the plants and worms.

Other gardeners do not bother with boiling the eggshells – they simply rinse them well with warm water and remove the membrane inside the shell. Some people feel that leaving the membrane on will attract pests. When the eggshells are dry, you can put them in a plastic baggie, crush them with a rolling pin & then store them in the freezer until you are ready to add to your garden.

If you have a compost pile, you can forgo the boiling process and just leave them in the compost pile for a few months. The rain and other influences from the compost pile simmering for a few months is all the cleaning that is needed. You can then make tea with the crushed eggshells and use this to water the soil around the plant.

These are a just a few ideas on how to use eggshells for having healthier tomato plants. By providing this extra calcium to the soil, growing tomatoes can be a more pleasurable and rewarding gardening experience!

purple tomato leaves

You’ve put a lot of work into your tomato plants. You’ve fertilized, watered, nursed, and babied, only to notice that your tomato garden progress is beginning to wane.

Slowly, your tomato plant has turned yellow and stopped growing. The leaves begin curling and turning a dark purple color. You can’t help but wonder if perhaps you killed your own plants! Did you water them too much or too little? What on earth do these deep dark purple leaves mean?

A Tomato’s Worst Nightmare

If tomatoes could dream, they would probably aspire to be plump, juicy, and strong. But what would you find in a typical tomato nightmare? More than likely you would come to face to face with a Beet Leafhopper.

Okay, so what is a Beet Leafhopper?

A Beet Leafhopper is the infamous wedge-shaped insect that carries the dreaded Curly Top Virus. They are known to take nutrients from plant leaves and stems. As a courtesy, they also infect their host with a virus that they transmit from plant to plant.

This little insect migrates with other little virus-carrying buddies, and can cause a plants growth to become stunted. They leave the leaves shriveled, curled, and burned. If fruit production continues on the infected plant, it ends up being deformed or prematurely ripened.

The Beet Leafhopper is a small insect that can bring a lot of trouble to a garden! Well, at least you can take solace in knowing that your curly, purple-leafed tomato plants are not a product of your negligence, but of a natural enemy who thinks of your garden as an ‘all you can eat’ buffet.

What can you do?

There’s a possibility that your tomato plant could be suffering from a Phosphorus deficiency. This can result in purple leaves, delayed fruit, and just all around slow plant growth. Try having your soil tested for nutrient deficiencies.

If your soil tests fine, but you still have deep dark purple leaves, then your tomato plants are either not getting enough water, or they’ve been infected by the migrating Beet Leafhopper. If your tomato plants are not getting enough water, then you can always set up a well-balanced watering program.

Tomatoes, like other plants, tend to respond well to scheduled care and well-rounded moisture.

The best way to deal with the Beet Leafhopper is to prevent it. As the name implies, it hops from one person’s garden to the next. Since it migrates, trying to protect the affected plants with a spray is pretty pointless.

Once the insect attacks your tomato plants, you’ll start to notice the damage in one to two weeks. By then, the Beet Leafhopper clan has already moved on to its next plant victims.

Fortunately, tomatoes are not this insect’s favorite food. But even if the Beet Leafhopper deems your tomato plant worthy enough for a taste test snack, it can still infect it with Curly Top Virus. For this reason, you can try making your tomato garden as unattractive as possible.

How do you make your tomatoes unattractive to the Beet Leafhopper? Should you try dressing your tomatoes up in mix match clothing? Although they may find it odd, it’s doubtful that the Beet Leafhoppers would fall for such a scheme! However, you could try planting flowers the insect finds offensive.

Try planting marigolds, petunias, and geraniums with your tomatoes. The Beet Leafhopper doesn’t like these plants, and may very well pass over your garden. Hopefully this will help keep your tomato garden purple-leaf free.

Unfortunately, exposed tomato flesh almost seems to be an invitation to creatures and insects to hop on board and taste test. The longer it stays on the vine, the more prone it is to attract fungus and bacteria. This is not a feature of tomato growth that a gardener usually enjoys.

Why Does This Happen?

One good way to understand why tomatoes split in varying degrees is to compare the cracks to stretch marks. When people gain weight or muscle mass quickly, the human body may form stretch marks in order to keep excess fat completely covered with skin.

Some tomatoes grow so quickly that the epidermis and cells simply do not have the ability to stretch over the new growth. Instead of forming stretch marks like a human, tomatoes simply split.

Basically, this happens because tomatoes get too much water during a period of time, and grow too quickly, also called “tomato water stress.”

Sometimes a gardener can stress tomatoes out with irregular watering techniques. Cracking often occurs when tomatoes go through a period of dryness followed by excessive ‘make up’ watering.

The dry spell followed by an excessively moist spell can cause the inner flesh of the fruit to grow much faster than the epidermis can stretch.

What Can You Do?

Preventive measures are always best. To keep your tomatoes from cracking, try to set up a consistent watering schedule. Don’t wait for the tomato soil to become completely dry before it gets watered.

The best solution is to set up a drip watering system that constantly and evenly waters your tomatoes during the day.

The Secret to Growing Incredible Tomatoes, and Doubling

Your Harvest…

If you enjoyed this tip, you’ll love “Organic Tomato Magic”, where I share with you the exact secrets my grandfather used to grow over 10,000 lbs of tomatoes per year, with just a couple acres of land, check it out at the link below:

Click here for “Organic Tomato Magic”

Black spots on tomatoes.

It’s called: blossom end rot, or blossom plight. Not to be confused with “year end rot/harvest rot.” That’s a different problem all together.

What begins as a few harmless looking dark spots on the bottom of your tomatoes, can overnight turn into a giant rotting fungus that eats the tomatoes form the inside. And will consume the entire tomato if not removed. Remove the affected tomatoes as soon as you notice sign of this disease.

Often, this will not happen to just 1 tomato on a plant, but many, sometimes even the entire plant, and it can happen very quickly. If you’ve ever had this happen to you, then you know how frustrating this is!

Here’s why it happens:

The experts say it’s because of poor / irregular soil moisture. And I have to say, since I’ve done my own experimenting, it appears to be true.

What does this mean?

When the plant is finally growing fruit, it is at a critical stage, when suddenly the roots get a shock, funky stuff begins to happen to the fruit:

1. If you water your tomatoes not enough, or at times when most of the water evaporates, it could likely cause blossom end rot.

I believe plants are kind of like babies, they like routine, so I stick to a watering routine, usually every morning it’s the first thing I do, plenty of water. I do not believe there is such a thing as “over watering” a tomato plant, they LOVE water.

2. If you grow plants in pots, pay attention, this is critical…

Get BIG pots. The most common problem I see with people growing tomato plants in pots is the pot is just way too small.

A small pot will lead to soil water evaporating quicker as it heats up during the day, which leads to irregular soil moisture. You may water the plant in the morning, as the sun hits the pot at noon, most of the water evaporates and the plant is thirsty for the rest of the day. Dry soil is not good!

How big should your pots be? A good rule of thumb is big enough to fit a basketball in. At least 10 Gallons. And fill it with soil all the way to the top.

Too often people put tomatoes in pots you’d put an orchid in or other flower sized pots, or they put them in big pots but only fill them up half way with soil(which defeats the purpose of the big pot!) The plants grow short and slowly this way. Remember tomatoes are big plants, and they need lots of soil to grow well.

A final thing about pots…

For the same reason, Don’t Use BLACK Pots For Tomatoes!, the color black attracts sun and heats up like crazy, the water in your soil will evaporate in the heat… which leads to problems like these.

The best pots are clay, but they’re expensive. The next best option is white or any other color of plastic. Pots are a big topic which I will write about later.

Above all, the best way to prevent blossom end rot is routine and continuous watering, and being vigilant about soil moisture… once the summer hits, water twice or even three times a day, especially on dry and hot days.

And remember, give your tomatoes lots of love!

That’s it for my weekly tomato tip,

Kacper M. Postawski