EGGS, ALFALFA & MATERS

[Red Dirt Farmer]

Anyone hear of breaking an egg in the hole prior to planting tomatoes or doing the same with an alfalfa cube?

The guy who told me this has excellent tomatoes each year but I wonder if my leg is being pulled.

[organichris]

Never heard of it, but it couldn't hurt. Sounds like some of my mad scientist shenanigans.

[mjc]

I'd be a bit wary of using the egg...too many raccoons around here that would try digging for it.

[aero83]

I mixed some alfalfa pellets in when putting my new beds in. First time growing here, first time growing my own garden since I helped my parents when I was young. Mixed a 50lb bag of pellets in 4 4x8 raised beds.

So far so good.

[salix]

Well, sorta - my "planting hole mix" consists of alfalfa, dry molasses, kelp meal, Epsom salts, crushed egg shell and worm castings. No measurements, no formula - just what seems right. Works for me.

[Stepheninky]

I have seen people use all kinds of crazy stuff to grow tomatoes. I think there is a vid on youtube called garbage pit tomatoes. If I remember correctly they dug a huge hole and dumped all their organic garbage in it (meat, leftovers, you name it looked like it was in there. They then planted the tomato and it grew fine. There is also a video by webcajun called " this is kinda embarrassing. " where some tomato seeds were spilled into the gravel (drive way) of his shed and they grew better than any of his planted tomatoes.

There are also groups of people forget the actual name but its biodynamics I think that plant tomatoes based on cosmic positioning and they harvest the seeds at a set date etc ... They also use any organic matter including animal products.

So who knows really, I do not think it would hurt unless something were to try and dig it up or the soil contained bad microbes that multiplied from the egg in the soil. Eventually it would break down and become a part of the soil.

Just wanted to add that animal byproducts do tend to break down at a faster rate than plant based.