Vegetables Gardening - Growing Organic Vegetables

Hi Cindy Shipley and Group:
I'd like to inject an unproven parallel to this calcium mystery.  When we use
calcium carbonate tablets to aid in preventing bone fractures we must use
vitamin D3 to aid in our body to absorb it or the calcium  just goes in one end
and out the other.
Many vitamins we need do the same thing because they are fat-soluble.  In
today's scramble to be thin many of our foods are fat-free.  Calcium by itself
has to have a link with other minerals to be available to the plants.  It could
be magnesium or other minerals.  Because you have succeeded in making calcium
available to your plants, it isn't just the calcium but you did something to
make it available to the plants... Think.  What did you do besides calcium...
that missing ingredient .  Was it Gypsum?
Nancy Kosling

________________________________
From: Cindy Shipley <falconsbride@yahoo.com>
To: MittleiderMethodGardening@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Wed, May 11, 2011 8:37:30 AM
Subject: [MittleiderMethodGardening] Enough calcium in the soil?

To Lyn in Grand Junction,

I have been using the Mittleider Method in Utah for many years now.  I was also
told that we have plenty of calcium in our soil and that we don't need to add
gypsum.  But I was seeing such great results from it.  I bought the books on
soil deficiencies and realized that many of my gardening problems were caused by
lack of calcium, i.e. carrots with multiple tap roots and black spots, blossom
end rot in tomatoes.  Although most of the discussion of calcium deficiency in
the book deals with acid soils, it would appear that our alkaline soils can also
have calcium-deficiency problems.  Maybe somebody else can tell us why that is,
but I just know that it is so.  I also find that if I over water (sometimes I
have trouble getting even watering in a row and it will mean one area gets too
much water while I try to get the water to the dry spot) then I can see calcium
deficiencies that clear up if I add a little extra gypsum.  Maybe the
over-watering is
leaching minerals from the soil in that area.

One of my neighbors is a retired professor of agriculture from our local
university.  He scoffs at my additions of calcium, but he can't argue with my
results!

Cindy
Tremonton, Utah

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