Enough calcium?

[duajones]

At planting time to each hole I added compost, cow manure, epsom salts, plant tone, worm casings and a couple tbsp of bone meal. I usually add gypsum instead of the bonemeal but didnt have any at the time. Since the bonemeal takes a while to work, I am wondering if I have enough calcium in the soil to prevent BER.
I did have some issues with BER last year, not bad but would like to eliminate it if possible.

[travis]

I would think coastal soil has sufficient calcium from ancient oceanic sediment.

Also, it would seem you'd have residual calcium from your previous amendments with bone meal and gypsum especially.

Additionally, the Epsom salts will facilitate the plants with absorbing and using the existing calcium.

Is your soil extremely sandy? If so, more organic material will give soil a higher negative charge so it can hold more nutrients which are positively charged. (I think calcium is positively charged like other nutrient ions are.) But you seem to have already done that with compost, manure and worm castings.

Maybe you can apply some calcium in a solution before the green fruit begins developing if you're still concerned about BER. Hopefully, mulching and a regulated irrigation regimen will get the job done since you already have applied calcium last few years.

I guess I'm assuming you're using the same tomato bed. If not, delete what I said.

[carolyn137]

I think if you do a search here you'll come up with lots of threads about BER, so I won't say much here.

Calcium is not the prime cause for BER and rare are any soils with not enough Ca++ and rare are soils with too low a pH which will bind Ca++ in the soil but that situation can be reversed.

BER results mainly from stress of plants and the two most common ones are uneven delivery of water and growing in too rich soil or adding too much N which causes too rapid growth which is a stress.

other stresses can include too hot, too dry, too cool, too rainy and on and on.

So if variety X has BER in one year it doesn't mean it's going to have it the next year. The paste varieties are known to be most susceptible to BER.

And the reason that for most folks that BER is seen primarily on early fruits is b'c as the plants get bigger and more mature they can better handle the many stresses that come their way.

Research has shown that when tissues taken from plants that have BER fruits are assayed, that there's plenty of Ca++ in the tissues, so uptake from the soil is OK, but the problem is one of Ca++ maldistribution within the plant due to stress.

BER is a multimillion dollar problem for the vegetable industry b'c it affects not just tomatoes, but peppers, eggplant, squash, cauliflower, cabbage and on and on.

So much research has been done in the last 20 years or so and if there were a magic fix to prevent it that would be great, but there isn't anything anyone can do and adding Ca++ to the soil or the planting hole or spraying the foliage with Ca++, etc., just doesn't work.

Folks will use the above and say it does, but it's just that the more mature plants can withstand the stresses and so BER disappears of its own accord.

[travis]

Funny then how all greenhouse hydro, coir block and soilless media tomato growers deploy a calcium solution through their fertigation systems. Are they not up to speed with the latest research on the subject?

[carolyn137]

Originally Posted by travis

Funny then how all greenhouse hydro, coir block and soilless media tomato growers deploy a calcium solution through their fertigation systems. Are they not up to speed with the latest research on the subject?

Not funny at all Travis b'c they're using artificial mix and non soilbased coir, etc.

My comments above were about soil, aka dirt, and those who grow tomatoes in containers with just artificial mix need to add Ca++ as well.

I have a hydro tomato place less than 10 miles away from me so I know how they operate as to what they use to grow the plants in and about their liquid feeding mixes. Thump, thump go the pumps as food goes out to the plants.

Again, my comments refer to soil based growing.

[travis]

So then the calcium has to be available in the growing media, or soil if that's the case, before the plants can take it up and use it? Maybe that's what I was confused about, that Duajones is apprehensive that not enough calcium is available in his soil, same as in a soilless media where it has to be supplemented to avoid BER.

Everything else he said seemed to indicate he was adding moisture retaining amendments, mulching, and one has to assume he knows about watering evenly considering how often that subject has been discussed.

Maybe I'm assuming too much to think that Corpus soils are so sandy that moisture drains away or evaporates very quickly, or even that calcium may be leached out by rainfall and sandy soil's inability to bind up and hold nutrients.

[carolyn137]

So then the calcium has to be available in the growing media, or soil if that's the case, before the plants can take it up and use it? Maybe that's what I was confused about,

*****

Correct.

But I did say that some have tried spraying Ca++ on the foliage but the results haven't been very good. And there's a product called Stop Rot that you're supposed to spray on the fruits, but that makes no sense at all b'c no water molecules get thru the epidermis of fruits. If it did the fruits would explode every time it rained or they were irrigated.

I thought I'd link to the local hydro farm I mentioned above. I know that not always do folks speak of personal experience when it hadn't actually happened, so here's a bit about Phyllis and Wayne Underwood's hydro farm where I hear the pumps going thump, da thump, da thump.

http://www.saratoga.com/green/shushan-valley.cfm

The farm is in the Sushan Valley and my brother and family lived there for 35 years before they moved to NC four years ago, so I was up at their place many times and visited Phyllis several times, but she was not interested in my heirloom tomatoes.

I live maybe 20 minutes from there but not in Shushan.

[creister]

Duane, unless you have sand, I think you would have heavy clay, just like many coastal soils in Texas. I don't know about your water, but here in Abilene we have alot of Ca in the water as well. Last year, I had BER problems in my containers only, and I think that was due to too much growth. You could call your local SCS man and he could probably tell you about your soil based on your location.

[creister]

I just read a soil survey, from 1909 for Nueces and CC counties. 72.5% of the soil is clay, 17% loam, and I think the rest as sandy loam and coastal sand. The clay type soils were listed as calcareous as well.

I also read that tomatoes did quite well there, and that Dwarf Champion was a very popular variety at the time in Corpus Christi.

I wouldn't worry about adding anything.

[duajones]

My soil is heavy clay but has improved a ton as far as drainage goes with the amending that I have done over the past 3 yrs. I use soaker hoses and try to water as evenly as possible and not give the plants too much nitrogen to avoid rapid growth that stresses the plants. My soil may have enough calcium already, I just wanted to make sure there was enough there if needed. Bone meal provides both calcium and phosphates and is very slow releasing, so I figured it wouldnt do any harm adding as little as I did.
The little BER problems I had last spring only showed up in one of my small 4X8 beds. I had no BER in my much larger bed. Anyway, I was probably overthinking this as I tend to do. Thanks for the replies