You might try to find some Tomato Tone Organic Fertilizer, it helps with Blossom End Rot. Tomato Tone has 3% Calcium in it.

Here is some info about Tomato Tone
"Blossom End Rot is sometimes seen in plants that have been grown in dry conditions. This disease can also be caused by a minor nutrient deficiency. Water your plants regularly and feed with Tomato-Tone by Espoma to insure all nutrient requirements are met."

"Tomato-Tone by Espoma is a complex blend of natural ingredients that provides all major, minor, and trace nutrients your tomatoes require."

Tomato Tone 4-7-10
Total Nitrogen (N) ............................................................. 4.0%
2.0% Ammoniacal Nitrogen
0.3% Other Water Soluble Nitrogen
1.7% Water Insoluble Nitrogen
Available Phosphate (P2O5) ............................................. 7.0%
Soluble Potash (K2O)....................................................... 10.0%
Calcium (Ca) .................................................................... 3.0%
Total Magnesium (Mg)...................................................... 0.5%
0.3% Water Soluble Magnesium (Mg)
Sulfur (S) .......................................................................... 5.0%
5.0% Combined Sulfur (S)
Boron (B).......................................................................... 0.02%
Chlorine (Cl) ..................................................................... 0.1%
Cobalt (Co)....................................................................... 0.0005%
Total Copper (Cu)............................................................. 0.05%
Total Iron (Fe) ................................................................... 1.0%
Total Manganese (Mn)...................................................... 0.05%
0.01% Water Soluble Manganese (Mn)
Molybdenum (Mo)............................................................ 0.0005%
Sodium (Na)..................................................................... 0.1%
Total Zinc (Zn) .................................................................. 0.05%
NET WEIGHT 5 LBS (2.26 kg)
GUARANTEED ANALYSIS
Derived from: Dehydrated Manure, Feather Meal, Crab Meal, Bone Meal, Cottonseed Meal, Dried Blood, Sunflower Meal, Kelp
Meal, Alfalfa Meal, GreenSand, Rock Phosphate,

I'd bet the blender method would work. I'm not so sure just laying them on the soil would release calcium fast enough. If you can get hold of wood ashes, that helps. Just don't put them too close to the stem or layer them too thick. Agricultural ground lime may also help.

You can try, but I'm not convinced crushed eggshells or eggshell water makes that much of a difference. I've tried them and couldn't see it made an impact.

Blossom end rot is linked to calcium deficiency to a certain extent, but it isn't necessarily that the calcium isn't present in the soil but rather than some other nutritional imbalance or other growing conditions can interfere with uptake of the calcium. That's one reason BER can be so vexing. One way (though probably not the only one) that BER develops is that rapidly growing plants (esp. if just overfed with nitrogen) draw extra moisture and and nutrients out of the fruit and into the leaves, and at that point the fruit develop BER.

In general, tomatoes that suffer from water stress or from extreme fluctuations in soil moisture levels are prime candidates for BER, but not all varieties develop it equally. Some varieties, especially paste type varieties like Roma, seem more prone to it than others and I have only see it on cherry types once or twice in many years of tomato growing.

Some of the other conditions that may cause BER include cool and humid weather; heavy, dense, extremely compacted soil; unmulched soil (because moisture levels fluctuate more); and excessive levels of some nutrients that interfere with calcium uptake including potassium and nitrogen. Sometimes BER may be caused by root damage.

Often, I think BER may be linked to a heavy fruit load on a plant that is relatively immature because you'll often see it on the first few fruit, red or green, on younger plants earlier in the year and then not on those same plants again after they've matured a bit more.

If your soil seems calcium deficient, you can add lime to your soil if you have acidic soil and you can add gypsum to your soil if you have alkaline soil.

I just throw eggshells on the compost pile and let them decompose and add the compost to the beds. Otherwise, I'm not convinced they break down fast enough to help the plants.

I don't think Tomato-Tone is the supreme answer. I have used it for several years, and every now and then I still have a tomato plant with BER on some of the fruit despite that, though generally when I see it, it is on fruit in container plantings, not those in the ground. They all get fed with Tomato Tone, though.

Good luck resolving the BER. The good news about BER is it often (though not always) goes away on its own.

Dawn

Matt,

What the other have said is good advice. I personally believe that BER most often comes from the top growth exceeding the root system. This is easily done if the plant is allowed to grow unregulated (leaving all suckers) especially with fast growing hybrids that are so common today. This can also come from root damage or other root growth problems like Dawn stated. My advice is to have a pruning plan that is based on where and how you grow your tomatoes (I.e. caged, staked, or trellised) that will limit top growth. Another helpful thing is to grow your transplants or seedlings leggy so you can pinch off the bottom leaves and plant the transplant with moist of the stem underground (like ¾ of it). Not strait down, more like in a trench.
Like dawn said in the end it will correct itself but you may lose your first month or two of crops waiting for that.
Good luck!

Christopher
S. OKC

Well, I didn't mean to suggest Tomato-tone was a cure all, I just thought it would do better than just egg shells.

I wonder if you could make some kind of egg shell tea and give the tomatoes a drink.

And no I don't work for or sell tomato-tone. LOL

Boomer Sooner,

Oh, no, I absolutely love Tomato Tone and use it every year.

In fact, after we pick up our granddaughter in Denton in a couple of hours so she can come up to the house and pick her ripe strawberries, then we're going to go south a few miles and stop in at Mike's Garden Center (one of my favorite garden centers) to pick up several bags of Tomato Tone because that's the retailer closest to me (and it isn't close!) that always has Tomato Tone.

I'm just not convinced that anything makes a 'quick' difference with BER since the issue is more related to the physiological problems involved in having plants with relatively immature vascular systems than with a straight nutritional deficiency. I assume that if there was a quick way to offer a liquified, water-soluable solution of calcium AND if it actually would prevent/halt BER ASAP, a product like that would be available from someone like Scott's.....can't you just see it now...."Scott's Miracle Grow with Quick-Release Calcium for BER Prevention"! (And we'd all buy it and try it, now wouldn't we?)

I also use Garden-Tone as my preferred veggie garden fertilizer, or Plant-Tone if I can't find Garden-Tone...sometimes the stores I go to sell out of Garden-Tone and Tomato-Tone. It, in combination with compost, keep my garden growing well. I don't work for Espoma either. lol

For those of you not familiar with the Espoma line of organic fertilizers, I've linked their webpage below.

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Espoma Website (Organic Gardening Line)

thanks everyone! I've got some good techniques to try this season. We'll see how it goes...
-Matt