Emmie's DIY CalMagPhos+ From Eggshells

Manic4organic said:
Okay thanks for this info, i understand about all the extra beneficials in the organic cider vinegar just depends if i can get my hands on any haha
Happy growing
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This is a popular item here in Missouri grocery stores. Here in my little town, it is in both stores, and I have two different brands to choose from.
 
I've just made a batch of this Emilya, 20 days to go. Thank you!
 
Kriaze said:
I've just made a batch of this Emilya, 20 days to go. Thank you!
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The stuff works great! I am using it in large portions as part of a cationic drench right now, with great results.
 
:circle-of-love:
:party::party:
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:passitleft:
 
;)Good topic here.

I personally stick to these..
-cheapskates Cal Mag = molasses.
-poormans CalMag = eggshells steeped in water for 24hr, and epson salt.

If phosphorus is needed,
-poormans P = shell fish, shells steeped in hot water. (I use shrimp and sometimes kingcrab)
*ocean dwelling shell fish also contain chitin. = bad bug deterrent.

I wouldn't agree with using bones for a Cal Mag type treatment at my flip. Most bones also contain N which I probably don't need to be giving any more of to my sweet ladies.

A good flip juice is a yummy smoothie + poormans Cal Mag..
Hint: banana peels are HIGH in K, but to many people's surprise it contains more P. Flowering buds love the P&K. ;)

*The more you know*
Did you know banana peels also contain high amounts of serotonin.–a neurotransmitter derived from tryptophan? This means...poormans prozak! And, if you can't sleep...it comes from tryptophan, same stuff in the turkey you eat be for taking a nap on thanksgiving!
 
So right now I believe my seedlings have a calmag defeciency(I think).

As I am no where near CalMag I could add molasses to my rain water and foliar spray?

I am going to make a batch today and give it a try.

I would love to go organic but I don't have time for brewing teas etc.
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sleepless said:
So right now I believe my seedlings have a calmag defeciency(I think).

As I am no where near CalMag I could add molasses to my rain water and foliar spray?

I am going to make a batch today and give it a try.

I would love to go organic but I don't have time for brewing teas etc.
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yes, adding molasses will help, it does have a lot of magnesium in it. It will help until you can make a good strong supplement with the eggshells.
 
....Next, add 5 parts vinegar to the pile of powdered eggshells...

...Use it by adding 1 tablespoon per gallon of water. Add 1 tablespoon of molasses to the gallon and you will have with the combination the equivalent of using calmag+ at the recommended dosages....
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Hey Emmie. While I wait for my replacement bottle of calmag to make it through the Canadian mail system ( the oxcart drivers are on strike again ), I'm making up an emergency calcium mix from vinegar and powdered oyster shells.

I'm trying to figure out how much to use. I may be able to calculate the ppm when I mix up the feeding- factoring in the ppm of the vinegar I guess. I'm curious though how you're calculating the dosage amount. I'm assuming that the end result of the 5:1 vinegar/shell mix is going to be a completely saturated solution (?) And based on saturation you're estimating the 1 tsp/gallon use? Cause we probably can't calculate based on the amount of shell we added - since I assume it won't all dissolve.
Or what? Or should I just follow the directions and not ask annoying questions?
 
Weaselcracker said:
Hey Emmie. While I wait for my replacement bottle of calmag to make it through the Canadian mail system ( the oxcart drivers are on strike again ), I'm making up an emergency calcium mix from vinegar and powdered oyster shells.

I'm trying to figure out how much to use. I may be able to calculate the ppm when I mix up the feeding- factoring in the ppm of the vinegar I guess. I'm curious though how you're calculating the dosage amount. I'm assuming that the end result of the 5:1 vinegar/shell mix is going to be a completely saturated solution (?) And based on saturation you're estimating the 1 tsp/gallon use? Cause we probably can't calculate based on the amount of shell we added - since I assume it won't all dissolve.
Or what? Or should I just follow the directions and not ask annoying questions?
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lol, no honest question should be annoying my friend. You have hit on exactly the problem... at 5:1 it doesn't all go into the solution and you end up filtering quite a bit out at the end. I am assuming the oyster shells will work in much the same way, and I understand that bone will do the same. The rule I have been following is that if I don't get residue, ie, it all gets taken up into the solution, then I didn't use enough. The 1 tblspoon/gallon estimate is simply an arbitrary marker however... you have to start from somewhere. During budset I at least double that amount as I am trying to add to the free phosphorus in the soil, and then I back down again, until around week 6, when I stop feeding an 8 week plant altogether.
 
Thanks :thumb:
I'm in kind of a tight spot while I await news of the calmag and the continuing negotiations with the united oxen drivers union- and I'm going away for a few days. Some of my plants are in a dtw hydro setup and I want to add some sort of calmag to the reservoir. Something that doesn't give me crazy ph fluctuations hopefully.


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Pure white vinegar reads as 640 ppm and ph 2.6



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This is about 90 minutes after mixing up the vinegar/shell stuff. The mix gives me the 'out of range' error for ppm. This meter only reads up to 3500 ppm. The ph isn't bad though.


I tried diluting some of the mix with rainwwater to 1/8 strength, but the ppm still reads O/R. This tells me that the mix is 28,000 ppm at bare minimum, and that it is presumably) mostly calcium and the vinegar ppm isn't a major factor to think about when I mix this stuff.
I added it to water to end up with 100 ppm (which fwiw used about 20ml/gallon) and fed it to the plants, along with about 50ppm worth of Epsom salts. Brought the res up to this amount as well. The ph seems pretty steady so far and hopefully the victims will like the stuff. Thanks for the idea.
 
you will also find that after fermentation finishes in 20 days or so, the pH will take a bit of a dip. Did you burn the oyster shells before adding them to the vinegar so you could turn part of it into phosphorus?
 
I baked the whole oyster shells slowly in a quiet corner of the wood stove before I crushed them. After I crushed them and ground them I heated them in a pan till the dust was getting to be a light tan color. The smell was horrible.
I felt like I could have cooked it longer but it's mainly calcium I care about at the moment so I didn't focus on phosphorus much or wonder why/how burning the shell would create it. I have other sources of phosphorous.

Before this experiment I tried crushing and mixing up calcium tablets from the pharmacy. The tablets were calcium carbonate- basically garden lime, and had the (what should have been) obvious result of tenaciously raising the ph up near 7 despite my attempts to stabilize it with ph down. Cause that's what lime does.

After that I tried powdered skim milk and molasses. For some reason the ph of this mix also didn't want to stabilize and I had the opposite problem- it kept falling and ph plus wouldn't hold it.
Not sure what happened there so maybe I screwed up somehow and there's probably more room for trying the milk idea again but I don't feel like I want to add it, or molasses, to a hydro res.

The vinegar and shell mix actually seems so far like it will be pretty stable ph-wise.
 
After a lot of tests and some major ph swings, which left my plants looking very sad, I came to the conclusion that none of the three DIY calmag mixes I made are suitable for hydro. Good for soil- but not hydro unless there is some way to stabilize the ph in a more appropriate range. And there definitely may be a way- but I don't know it, and adding a ton of ph-down, or ph-up in the case of milk, didn't seem to work well.

The concoction I made using powdered shell and vinegar seems to have a decent ph in the jar- but when mixed in a container with nutrient solution I found the ph rising into the mid-high sixes.

The powdered calcium carbonate tablets had the same effect- basically it's adding lime to your res/pot, and lime likes to stay around ph 7.
I mean- that's fairly obvious anyway in hindsight- but you know what they say about hindsight.

As for milk- it has that same sort of buffering effect where it attempts to raise the ph of the mix close to 7. As with the other two DIY mixes- it's success in that dept mostly depends on how much of it is added.
BUT- milk only has that effect when it's fresh. And it doesn't stay fresh for long at all. As it sours it gets increasingly acidic and after a few days is down close to ph 4.

I posted more lengthily about all this here - Anyone make DIY calmag?

Thanks for the ideas Emmie. :thumb:
 
Emilya said:
you will also find that after fermentation finishes in 20 days or so, the pH will take a bit of a dip. Did you burn the oyster shells before adding them to the vinegar so you could turn part of it into phosphorus?
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Hi!
I apologize for bumping an old thread but I have a batch fermenting and had some questions about... well... some questions. Lol.

I am a vegan so I had to ask friends for egg shells. I figure using the shells of eggs that have already been eaten and would be trashed normally falls within my vegan moral set.

I started my first batch with the shells from only 20 eggs. All eggs here in Italy are brown and not also washed. So I let them steep in very hot water but not boiling to remove dirt and membranes. I then ran the shells through a nut mill and toasted them up in a pan on the stove.... pheweeee what a stink. No worries about the neighbors smelling my girls after that Smokey sulfur stink bomb . So toasting them as much as I could without totally charring them turned them a bit darker than the ones in your batch as they were brown eggs to begin with. I substituted the food processor for the nut mill this time and no matter how long I ran it... what setting, or what manner... short burts, etc... I could only get about 50% down to true powder and the rest was very very very finely ground egg shell.

I only had a little bit of regular (wine) vinegar in the house but I had half a bottle of a decent chianti my father had left behind after visiting before Christmas... I don't drink... so corked after 4 months it was turning but... I wouldn't say fully turnt... lol... turnt.... but it did have enough kick to fizzle up especially with the little bit of real red wine vinegar I had. Still, if it wasn't full on vinegar then, I figured in an open jar the wine would turn quickly while also breaking down the shells quickly and boy was I right.

So.... the chianti based cal mag. It has been sitting about two weeks and has more levels of sediment. 4.... when I saw yours turned to three. Did I screw up using the wine turned vinegar as it is too strong and usually diluted before you get your normal salad dressing wine vinaigrette

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It's definitely not chianti anymore... that's for sure. I give a good stir at least twice a day. Those photos were taken post morning stir so the top level is actually even paler than that when it sits for 12+ hours.

I just don't understand the chemistry behind all this at all so I want to make sure I'm not going to kill my plants because I made a substitution. I also cant find molasses for the life of me anywhere here in Bella Italia. The only time I ever even see it is in some feed for horses.

Is there another sugar I could use. I can find pure maple syrup ... lol I don't know if that's even close.

I am using the BioBizz line of bottled organic and vegan nutrients as well as their soil which is also wonderfully vegan.

After a suggestion from another member I have been collecting snail shells that their original owner has left behind in addition to more fragile sea shells (I live at the beach), and of course the eggs shells from friends... I have more of the turned chianti which I would like to use... it's just super concentrated vinegar by now... so I could start a new batch but I just want to know if my first batch looks alright or did my substitution ruin it.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. For those who actually paid attention in chemistry...

XxKitty
 
Hey there Miss Kitty!
Thanks for the note, and congratulations on a successful experiment! There is no problem in that you have gotten a 4th layer and I think that this is simply an indication that you indeed got your powder ground up well, and that lower 4th layer appears to be carbon from the frying process. This is not going to hurt anything when it comes to your plants, and I am sure that being good Italian plants, they will enjoy the chianti! The layers show you that the process is working, and I would be confident in applying this fermentation to your garden.
For sugar, try a good dark brown sugar as a substitute. Brown sugar is many cases is simply refined white sugar with molasses added to it. Use a lot... it won't hurt a thing. Also, the snail and oyster shells would be a great substitute for the eggs... a little harder to pound down into a powder, but it will work just fine. Scrap bones from your table will also work well.
Best of luck, and thank you for trying this...
I am going to use you as an excuse to open a Chianti here this evening... cheers!
Emmie
 
:ciao: No maple syrup for sugar unfortunately. I forget what they are called at the moment but it contains anti-fungal and anti-microbial compounds. Most ferments actually prefer processed cane sugar. My absolute favorite is Date sugar. If you can't find that then just chop some pitted Dates and throw them in.
:Namaste:
 
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