Calcium for tomatoes?

[vfem]

I add egg shells and/or oyster shell to my holes, and I've never had the blossom end rot again.

If grandma said, I do! lol

 

[hoodat]

If you use a lot of chicken manure, you may get too much growth and other problems.

Seedcorn, can you tell me more about what you mean? I haven't seen excessive top growth from too much nitrogen but I'm curious to know what other problems I might encounter. The coop litter and manure compost fall through early spring on the gardens (usually under snow) and then we till it in about a month before planting. The chicken run is soil, vegetative matter (straw, leaves, whatnot) that also composts fall through early spring on the gardens before tilling. We also often plant winter rye as a cover crop that gets tilled in early spring. I'm hoping I'm not inviting a headache from this routine.

What I believe Seedcorn was referring to is that when the nitrogen level is too high in relation to the phosphate and potash the tomato plant will put all of its energy into vegetative growth giving you a huge plant with little or no fruit. The ideal balance for tomatos and other fruiting crops is an equal amount of all three main elements. For leaf crops such as lettuce, cabbage etc. more nitrogen is necessary.
It isn't good to get too hung up in ratios however. So long as your balance is somewhere within reason the plants will do fine. Plants are very adaptable to the soil conditions they encounter. They want to fulfill the purposes nature intended for them.