You know there are a lot of gardening myths,
misconceptions or just misinformation that's passed around a lot on the
internet. Or maybe you've heard it from family or friends.
Or maybe you've even told some of this to family and friends.
But what I thought I'd do today is break down four different myths and
misconceptions when it comes to gardening.
Hopefully to shine a little bit of a more explanatory light on what's actually
happening in the garden so you can take that knowledge and use it to grow some
epic plants. So let's go ahead and jump right into it.
Misconception number one is the use and misuse of eggshells in the garden.
So eggshells are really popular amendments.
A lot of people like to use them in the garden.
And what I thought I would do is first,
before we get into how people either use or misuse them,
let's just talk about what is actually in an eggshell that makes it so valuable
for us. So first of all, calcium right,
about 50 parts per million of calcium within an eggshell.
There's also other elements. You have your sulfur, your potassium,
your magnesium, your sodium, and then if you look really closely in here,
you can see the inner membrane of the egg is actually still in there.
So there's also some organic matter.
I think usually around five-ish percent by weight of organic matter in every
eggshell.
So certainly a lot of good things and there's definitely some reasons why you
would want to use them in the garden.
But let's talk about one of the most common ways I see them used that actually
has nothing to do with the nutrient content of them at all.
And that would be as a slug and snail barrier.
A lot of people will crush these eggshells up and they will use them by placing
them around a sensitive plant, maybe one that's prone to slugs and snails,
with the logic that the sharp edges of the crushed eggshell will deter slugs and
snails. It's just simply not true.
It is verifiably and demonstrably not true.
You can actually go watch videos of time lapses where slugs crawl right over and
right back over again.
And actually there's videos of slugs and snails crawling over the blades of
extremely sharp knives.
So the sharpness is not a good reason or deterrent for a slug or a snail.
What actually deters slugs and snails is either straight up impeding their
motion so they're not able to get to the plant at all or doing something that
dehydrates them or affects their actual tissue, right? So salt,
sheep's wool, dry diatomaceous earth.
If you're in a drier location that can be a really good choice.
The sharpness of eggshells really does not do it and I would just highly
recommend not using that as a mechanism anymore.
Now another thing people will use when it comes to eggshells is they will just
plant directly in these and start their seeds in them.
It's a really good way to make use of a spent eggshell, right?
You've already had your breakfast omelet.
You might as well plant a little seed in this thing. Well, that's good.
There's no real gardening specific reason to do it.
Aside from the fact that it just makes use of something that would have
otherwise gone to waste. But uh, you know, I think a lot of people will do this.
They think that oh, the organic matter will break down,
it gives it some extra calcium, this and that.
It won't become bioavailable in anywhere near the time span that a seedling is
growing and the seedlings mostly get most of their nutrition from the soil or
the seed itself. And so by the time you're transplanting this out,
you really aren't going to make use of any of the nutrient content.
And if you transplant this directly into the soil with a young seedling in it,
it's going to get root bound right down here.
It would be the same logic as to why you wouldn't put a plastic pot in the
ground. Very hard for the roots to get through this.
So you would either want to crack the bottom and then plant it or honestly just
pop it out and plant it directly into the soil.
Why would you not do it that way? It makes complete sense to me.
And then you can use this eggshell for probably some of its better purposes,
which we're going to talk about right now.
So why should you actually want to use an eggshell? Well,
what you can do is you can crush it up and you can throw it into your
vermicompost, your compost bin, your hot compost bin,
or you can actually put it into your soil. But the finer the particles,
the better it breaks down. That's just a general rule of composting.
The finer that it is, the more surface area there is for microbes, et cetera,
to start acting upon this material here. It's a very tough,
hard material and break it down.
If you put this directly in your compost or certainly your vermicompost,
it's not going to do a whole lot for a while. On the other hand,
if you blend it or if you crush it,
it's going to break down much quicker. So it's a better way to use eggshells.
And I'll leave you with one final way,
and this is actually a really clever and creative way from my friend Steven over
at Nature's Always Right. You can get the calcium out of the eggshell,
make it water-soluble,
and actually use it as a foliar spray if you create something called
water-soluble calcium.
So the way you do that is you go ahead and you crush the eggshells up,
put them on a baking tray, bake them for maybe 45 minutes at a normal heat, 350,
something like that. You want to burn off the organic matter and sterilize them.
Then you put that in a jar,
mix it one part eggshells to 10 parts of brown rice vinegar.
Let that sit for seven to 10 days.
You're actually making that calcium water-soluble.
You're sort of mobilizing it out of the eggshell itself.
And then what you'll do with that mixture is mix that mixture,
one part of that mixture to a thousand parts water,
and then you'll use that as a foliar spray on your plants to give it a quick hit
of calcium.
So that can be a really good way to actually extract the calcium quicker so it's
bioavailable very quickly and you can use it in the garden.
Myth number two is using forks or pointy things to place upright in your beds to
prevent animals from crawling into them. Actually,
this is kind of a funny story. I have a follower on Instagram @epicgardening,
if you guys haven't followed me there already,
who sent me this crazy picture of a raised bed. In fact,
many raised beds where she had 750 plastic forks stuck up in her beds just like
this. And she was hoping that both her cat and stray cats would stay out of it.
First of all,
what an incredible misuse of 750 one-use plastic items, right?
Not a great use right there. But even if you were to use bamboo stakes,
et cetera,
most cats and crawling animals don't really get deterred by that.
So there's a lot of different ways that you can deter cats from the garden.
This is not one of them. I mean,
chicken wire fencing around them can work really well. You can use Remay,
which is sort of like a frost cloth. In fact,
I've used Remay really well and to great effect for a burrowing skunk that I had
here in the garden. So that's worked really well for me.
You can do all sorts of other things and actually on Instagram they have this
crazy thread of people with hundreds and hundreds of suggestions of ways that
they've dealt with cats in the garden.
Just do not do this pointy things sticking up in your beds.
It's a hassle. It kind of gets in the way.
And especially if you're using single use items, unlike this metal fork here,
it is an incredible waste of our natural resources. So that's myth number two.
Myth number three has to do with blossom end rot.
It is not caused by an insect and it's not caused by a disease. So first of all,
what is blossom end rot?
It refers to a condition in the plant where the blossom end or the bottom end of
this tomato right here will get a water soaked spot and then eventually it will
harden off.
It will become black or brown and very sort of tough and that plant is
effectively sort of ruined or that fruit is ruined.
Now you hear the word rot and you think, okay, well maybe a bacterial issue,
maybe a fungal issue.
It's actually a plant condition and a lot of people will then say, okay,
well it's a calcium deficiency in your fruit.
And technically that is true,
although you know it's not quite that simple. What's happening actually,
it's the inability of a plant to transport calcium to where it needs to be
that's causing that problem. Oftentimes the soil itself has plenty of calcium.
There's something going on in the plant where it is unable to take that calcium
and transport it to where it needs to be.
So one of the best ways to prevent blossom end rot is actually to care for the
plant as perfectly as possible.
Uneven watering is a very common cause of blossom end rot.
So if you're growing tomatoes, certainly in containers,
it can be a really good idea to use a little bit of mulch.
Or really anywhere you're growing tomatoes use some mulch to even out that soil
moisture. Also just care for the plant.
And so this kind of ties back to our eggshells question. You would think, okay,
we'll throw some eggshells in the bottom and crushed or not,
that's going to help mobilize some calcium and then the plant will get the
calcium and won't have blossom end rot. Most soils actually have enough calcium.
It's the inability of the plant to move it.
So that is definitely a misconception and I think a lot of people who get
blossom end rot will really just try to foliar spray with calcium.
These tomato plant leaves aren't able to send calcium from here to here.
Roots up is how this fruit is going to get the calcium.
So those are just some misconceptions if you want to prevent it.
Some people will still foliar spray and give it a little calcium here with the
underlying theory that if the leaves get enough then the roots won't send it to
the leaves and then conversely they will send it to the actual fruit.
Right.
So those are some things about blossom end rot that you may not have known.
Hopefully that gives you a clear up on myth number three. Myth number four,
pine needles will acidify your soil. This is simply not true.
What happens is fresh pine needles are slightly acidic.
Older pine needles really aren't acidic at all.
And actually researchers took soil samples from an area where pines that were at
least 50 years old and had been growing continuously for that time.
So he took a soil sample from that area.
They took a soil sample from another area where no pines had been growing for 50
years and the soil pH was relatively the same.
So the ability for pine needles to acidify your soil,
certainly not going to happen if they can't even acidify the soil in a pine
forest. And actually even acid rain itself,
which is not related to pine needles, really doesn't acidify the soil itself.
So it's very hard for something like that to do that.
And so what that means is if you have a really good source of pine needles,
by all means go ahead and use it.
And you can even let them dry out a little bit to make sure it's closer towards
a neutral pH. But I would not worry about pine needles acidifying your soil.
They can actually be quite a fantastic additive to compost,
additive as a mulch or many other uses in the garden.
So four different myths. I hope that was helpful.
I've got a lot more planned for you guys this growing season.
We're coming up on the apocalypse grow challenge.
The book Field Guide to Urban Gardening is coming out,
so please go ahead and order that down in the video description.
I'll send you a free pack of seeds if you order before May 14th which is the
release date, which I'm really excited about. And a lot more coming.
So if you guys have any of your favorite myths,
leave them down in the comments below. Perhaps I can do in-depth videos on them.
Or if there's anything in this video you want explained more also leave that in
the comments down below. Maybe I can do a stand alone episode on it.
Until next time, good luck in the garden and keep on growing.
And check out this garden right here. Look at this thing.
Autopilot greens, baby. And that's going in soon. Alright,
later.