# top dressing with lime



## MELOC (Sep 26, 2005)

i had lots of issues with tomatos rotting last year and i read it could be a problem with nutrition. what i read suggested i need calcium. my dad always added a little lime to the soil each year, i have not continued that practice. i am not so concerned about pH, i am concerned about nutrition.

before i was able to get lime, i planted a row of plants without adding lime. how effective would top dressing be? could i make a solution of lime and water and apply that?

the rest of the tomato patch was amended with lime. i tilled it in before i planted the plants. i get the feeling those plants will do great this year. time will tell i guess.

another question...what is the difference in dolomitic lime and cheleated lime pellets? when i created a few raised beds, i used the existing soil and loads of composted goat manure and some peat moss. i suspected the soil mix would be acidic, as the soil where i live is generally acidic and i know the peat and compost was most likely acidic, so i bought the only lime i could find at the time...cheleated lime pellets. the lime is like small brown "beads". does this have a decent calcium content, or is it entirely different than dolomitic lime?


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## SquashNut (Sep 25, 2005)

I don't know any thing about the cheleated lime pellets. I use the dolomite lime. It has magnesium in it as well as the lime.
I would go ahead and side dress with it and then water it in real good.
Well aged compost is usually nutral in PH, but you will still need some lime if your soil is acid. I use lime on every thing except potatoes.


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## MELOC (Sep 26, 2005)

actually, i just found the old bag. it looks to be similar to dolomitic lime in the mineral content.

thanks.


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## Zebraman (Aug 11, 2006)

Hey Guys;They are the same.Dolomitic is a mixture of Calcium and Magnesium carbonates.The chelated or Pelletized lime works faster in the soil than the powdered (Dol)lime.-


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## Randy Rooster (Dec 14, 2004)

Meloc-

I have very sandy soil low in nutrients- I lime as much as I can without causing the ph to go out of wack- you dont want over about a 6.2 ph. I also add calcium sulfate aka around here as "land plaster". It provides calcium without effecting the ph. I add it to the holes at transplant time and also topdress when I see fruits developing. I also fertilize with calcium nitrate. You may also have some fungal issues that are causing rot. I did as well until I started weekly spraying with a copper fungicide.


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## moonwolf (Sep 20, 2004)

I like to add crushed egg shell to the soil around each tomato plant. 
I 'topdress' with manure tea. Always seem to have good tomatoes. :shrug:


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## thechickenladyx (Jul 5, 2006)

i heard a scoop of epsom salt, when transplanting. tomatoes love compost. the nutrition the better. we plant them in the old goat field, and i can't stop them. 

jesse


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

MELOC said:


> before i was able to get lime, i planted a row of plants without adding lime. how effective would top dressing be? could i make a solution of lime and water and apply that?


As a controlled test to the effectiveness of lime in your garden, do nothing with that row and see what happens. Blossom end rot in tomatoes is not caused by a shortage of calcium but rather the plant's inability to obtain it from the soil. Many other factors contribute to that problem and one may have BER on plants growing in a medium loaded with calcium. In some cases, it may be a combination of factors which lead to it. Since the calcium is taken up by the roots, a healthy root system is required. That's more important than the uneven watering factor. As calcium dissolves, it's leached deeper into the soil. If the roots are all near the top of the soil, they may not be getting down to where the calcium is. The practice of setting large tomato plants very deep can also lead to BER. Although the tomato plant will grow another set of shallow "breather" roots, those original ones suffocate rather than becoming deep feeder roots. By the time the plant gets everything straightened out, half of the plant's "arteries" are clogged. In time, the roots are able to go deep enough or develop enough to be able to absorb calcium in sufficient amounts to avoid BER. At that time also, the plant's are older and better able to bypass the clogged spots.

Martin


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## MELOC (Sep 26, 2005)

i guess it is a bit late for a control row...i spread a scant amount on top of the soil in that row. your post does have me wondering just a bit though. i did plant my tomatos deep last year. 

this problem has been happening quite a bit in the last two years...worse than it has ever been. i have always had a few BER tomatos, but last year it was absolutely terrible. the only thing that produced any amounts were roma tomatos. every brandywine, rutgers and early girl produced maybe one or two healthy fruit per plant. the rest were junk.

i have grown and helped grow food in this garden for over 30 years. i have seen some bad tomatos, as i said before, but last years fiasco was the worst i have ever seen. i still think the soil needs/needed lime. my dad always added a little bit seasonally and dusted plants for pests using lime. he would also use chemical fertilizers. i use chemical fertilizers on occassion, but i have not applied lime for many years.

i guess i will not really know until i have the soil tested. that is another can of worms because i have so many areas to test. the main garden area is @ 50 or 60 ft. x 50 or 60 ft. the bottom half is awesome dark loam. the middle is pretty darn good. the top half is rocky, not as deep and can be both powdery and hard. then there are my raised beds which were made with existing dark loam, peat moss, sand and composted goat manure. i would have to have about 8 seperate tests to get accurate measurment of nutrition conditions. i have just been trying to monitor plant health and soil composition (organic matter and whether i need sand etc.) and apply compost, manure and sand if i think it is needed. the nasty portion of the garden obviously needs organic matter. there are still a few patches of clay heavy soil scattered about that could use a bit of sand as well as humus. i am getting there little by little.

my dad was big on using horse manure for fertilizer and organic matter. i have quite a bit of it composting right now for use on the upper section. i applied a little last fall, but i didn't over do it because i have no tractor to pull the plow (or anyone to guide it) and my tiller expired last year. hopefully i will soon be able to afford a new motor for the tiller. i plan to till in composted manure in the fall. i planted corn in that section as that has always been the most forgiving crop grown there, discounting maybe cukes grown in hills which seem to do ok there.

generally speaking, most everything does great most of the time. the nasty section of garden is just hard to work as it is a bit stoney and needs organic material (and a rock rake, lol). i would try mulch gardening, but it requires far more than i can gather...and i refuse to buy material for mulching. as far as the tomatos go, the last two years were painful and i need to resolve whatever ails them with the BER.

sorry for the gushing, lol.


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

Your report is just another reason why plant pathologists can not point a finger on a single underlying cause. You report good results with Roma type but everything else getting BER. Nearly everyone else will tell you that Roma types are the ones which are most subject to it! 

The root problem is one that those same pathologists can't fully explain. What can't be explained is why BER is almost totally missing from volunteers of any variety which are left in place to grow and produce fruit. Same ground, same variety, same care. The only difference is one stays in place with no root disturbance while the other is subjected to all sorts of traumatic stress. 

I do not normally see any BER here and do almost nothing to prevent it. The past two years had most tomatoes grown in the community gardens where the soil is prairie silt almost 2 feet down. After getting through another 3 to 4 feet of an odd clay and silica sand mix and round granite stones, there's finally a few small limestone rocks in moraine alluvial sand. (New water system installed this week so we got a real good look at what was underground!) I guarantee that the soil in my plots would not be conducive to growing BER-free tomatoes if a heavy concentration of calcium was needed since it's not there in the silt in any abundance. Some neighboring gardeners there have had BER the past several years and all are dealing with about the same soil.

However, I never just put a tomato plant into the existing soil without a planting hole mix. And one thing that that mix has is "shredded" deer bones. It's my own version of slow-release bone meal. I can't claim how effective it is for preventing BER but it's one of the factors.

Another thing that I do is start all of my tomatoes outside in a cold frame. In order to transplant, all that I wish for is at least one true leaf. At that point, there is still only one main tap root plus a few shallow feeder and breather roots. The small seedlings thus have minimal transplant shock and almost immediately resume growth. Plant a large spindly plant deep and it will sit there for a week to 10 days before any new growth is observed. That's because it has to start all over programming and producing an entirely new root system. Planting short but strong seedlings has always worked for me and I'm not about to switch back to large or root-bound plants again

Martin


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## MELOC (Sep 26, 2005)

you bring up another interesting point...and thanks in advance for your experience (and the tomatos i got from you, lol). some of the romas were purchased and some were volunteers. i do think the volunteers did better than the purchased plants. i did experience some BER on some romas, but some produced really well.

my last post was so lengthy as i had a lot to discuss. one of the points i was trying to make was that i am trying to become more reliant on home-spun fertilizers. it is not that i am reluctant to use chemical fertilizers, i am just trying to find ways to be more self-reliant. the only downside i have read about commercial fertilizers is that sometimes they can contribute to salts building up in the soil. that is no great concern, i use them when i feel they are needed, i am just trying to keep my food production totally local. i use horse and goat manure and have access to poultry manure. i have lots of wood ashes. i have enough organic material to make nice compost...weeds, bedding material and manure, twigs etc. i guess lime has to be purchased as i have no mine, lol. one thing i don't have is phophorous. i was thinking of using bone meal. would that be a good source? i normally harvest 2-4 deer per year and the bones get tossed. i eat a lot of chickens each year as well.  maybe i should start incinerating the bones and mashing them up.


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## Rockin'B (Jan 20, 2006)

Martin,

Maybe you have answered this in some previous post, but I'm curious to know how you "shred" the deer bones. I have plenty of bones and am a big believer in blood and bone meal. Making my own bone meal would be great!

Thanks,

Bill


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## ceresone (Oct 7, 2005)

I'm lazy, I guess (?) I order the tomatoes alive mix from gardens alive, then I add epsom salts, and shredded egg shells, along with composted manure. works good for me. one fellow told me he always added a paper match to the hole too. I've never had BER.


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## Cabin Fever (May 10, 2002)

Calcium doesn't move easily in soil. Consequently, topdressing will not be as effective as working into the root zone. If you're interested in calcium, my recommendation is to use any type of available lime (calcitic, dolomitic, or pelletized) or wood ashes on acidic soil. If your soil is alkaline, use gypsum. Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate) do not provide any calcium.


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## MELOC (Sep 26, 2005)

thanks...graybeard.


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## SquashNut (Sep 25, 2005)

We burn our bones from dinner each night in the wood furnace. Then we spread our wood ashes over the garden right on top of the snow. Larger bones are put back in the furnace untill they are powdery. When the dogs are done with their bones they go in the furnace too.
What are the pros and cons to this. Are we adding any thing to the garden this way from the bones?
one thing is, it keeps our dogs away from chicken bones, for sure.


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## Paquebot (May 10, 2002)

Rockin'B said:


> Martin,
> 
> Maybe you have answered this in some previous post, but I'm curious to know how you "shred" the deer bones. I have plenty of bones and am a big believer in blood and bone meal. Making my own bone meal would be great!
> 
> ...


For 30 years here, every deer rib cage has been hung from some big lilacs for the birds to enjoy all winter. By spring, the bones are stripped fairly clean. Used to just smash them up with a hatchet and mix them into a compost pile. Good hot pile will even dissolve entire heads and one year we actually composted 7 deer heads. (Only found parts of lower jawbones.) 10-12 years ago, bought a used chipper-shredder and that worked great to crush and smash the bones. Past few years, I just run over the rib cages with an old 18" rear-bagger Toro mower. Noisy, but chews them up good enough for the compost tumbler. Then, after one full heat cycle, they are dissolved with the calcium and minerals having been absorbed into the carboniferous material.

I do not save the leg bones anymore since they do not dissolve so easily as the rest of the bones and the mower would never be able to handle them. They were among those which I used to smash with the old hatchet. Having a slightly acidic soil, any bits of bone that gets into the ground will eventually dissolve but I don't want to go through the effort of manually smashing those hard things!

Martin


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## Rockin'B (Jan 20, 2006)

Paquebot said:


> For 30 years here, every deer rib cage has been hung from some big lilacs for the birds to enjoy all winter. By spring, the bones are stripped fairly clean. Used to just smash them up with a hatchet and mix them into a compost pile. Good hot pile will even dissolve entire heads and one year we actually composted 7 deer heads. (Only found parts of lower jawbones.) 10-12 years ago, bought a used chipper-shredder and that worked great to crush and smash the bones. Past few years, I just run over the rib cages with an old 18" rear-bagger Toro mower. Noisy, but chews them up good enough for the compost tumbler. Then, after one full heat cycle, they are dissolved with the calcium and minerals having been absorbed into the carboniferous material.
> 
> I do not save the leg bones anymore since they do not dissolve so easily as the rest of the bones and the mower would never be able to handle them. They were among those which I used to smash with the old hatchet. Having a slightly acidic soil, any bits of bone that gets into the ground will eventually dissolve but I don't want to go through the effort of manually smashing those hard things!
> 
> Martin



Thank you for the info. I've never really thought about crushing my own bone meal but you've given me food for thought. I have access to plenty of deer carcass' in the fall. 
I have a rough service shredder that I bet I could fashion some form of skirt around to capture the chewed up bones.


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## veggrower (Jan 13, 2007)

BER is a lack of Calcium--it can be from an actual deficiency of soil calcium or it can be induced by growing conditions--most often inadequate watering. Without proper watering the plant can't uptake the calcium no matter how much is present in the soil.

I rarely get BER--just a few fruit every year out of tens of thousands. Always right at the beginning of the season--one here one there.

Be careful of using only dolomite lime. If the ratio of Calcium to Magnesium gets out of whack, with the Mg being too high, it will make your soil tighten up. The Mg chemically reacts with the clay and silt particles. Good rule of thumb--lime twice with limestone and one time with dolomite to maintain the proper ratio.










I just finished planting my tomato starts for this year last Tuesday. The ones in this photo were planted on May 2. This photo was taken the next day. I have a greenhouse start my seed and grow them out into 2 inch pots. They are about 12" tall with buds just forming when I set them out. The 500 or so plants I have under plastic grew the 1st day and now, just 9 days later are blooming and the canopy has doubled in width.











I cut a trench 12 inches deedp with a middle buster mounted to my tractor. The tomatoes grow just fine planted this deep, no setback, not even the root bound ones. The only lag in growth is due to crazy spring weather. The ones in this photo were set outside, no cover, on May 1. They then had 4 days of thundersotrms--high winds, heavy rain and hail. They are still doing fine as you can se in this photo.

I'll post more photos tomorrow. I have over 1800 tomato plants in the ground, 25 different varieties, all heirlooms except for 3 hybrids. The tomato plants set outside on Tues the 8th are already growing, despite being set 12 inches deep and becoming root bound. :shrug:


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## MELOC (Sep 26, 2005)

nice production...if i had less rocks, your loam would look almost as good as mine


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## veggrower (Jan 13, 2007)

Some photos from last year's tomato crop:










Planted just the same as the plants in the post above. allowed to sprawl on the ground, overhead watered. Look at the load of tomatoes on these plants. All of them huge. No BER even though they were planted deep and root bound. No lime added last year, either and my soil was low in Ca. I plant vigorous rooted heirlooms at a 5ftX5ft spacing so that each plant has 25 square feet to occupy and search for nutrients. A technique I picked up from my buddy Steve Solomon, garden book author, speaker, founder of Terrritorial Seed Co, writer of the growing instructions for many better seed catalogs, homesteader, raconteur and man about town. Being a homesteader/survivalist, he was concerned about how to raise food without being able to pump water and spent years researching low water usage gardening on his Umpqua River homestead. He advocated planting vigorous rooted heirlooms on a 6ftX6ft spacing so that the plants roots never have to compete with each other for water or nutrients. Works well for me. Only a few BER fruits early in the season out of tens of thousands.










Under the poly tunnels. These are an Italian heirloom called 'Pantano' Deelish!










Here is what epsom salts will do for you solanums--this is the 3rd flush of fruit this banana pepper plant produced--it had 4 flushes last year bearing almost 40 lbs of peppers! Those pepper plants are almost 3 feet tall. Notice the deep green in the leaves in the background. The epsom salts make the green so deep it is almost black. 

Epsom salts is magnesium and sulfur. Magnesium is part of the chlorophyll moleculewhich is the green in the leaves and is where photosynthesis takes place. Sulfur is a key to having nice green leaves--it is impossible to tell a Sulfur deficiency from a Nitrogen deficiency by just looking. Soil or tissue samples are needed. NPK are not the only nutrients, folks. Not necessarily the most important, either. There are 9 macronutrients--NPK, Ca, Mg, S, C, H, O,.
The last 3 being carbon, hydrogen and oxygen--the building blocks of carbohydrates. IMO Ca, Mg and S need more of your attention than NPK if you have reasonably fertile organic soil.


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## veggrower (Jan 13, 2007)

MELOC said:


> nice production...if i had less rocks, your loam would look almost as good as mine


I picked a relatively rock free area to grow the tomatoes because I till before planting. Yous should see some other areas--my soil series is "Salem Gravelly Loam" Hay muchas piedras!


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