SweetLeafGrow said:

Greetings Cultivators-

I recently found a tutorial on making homemade Cal/Mag. Basically, you take egg shells and crush them up and then add a cup or two of white vinegar to a glass jar. The vinegar reacts with the Calcium in the egg shells and from what I understand, leeches the Calcium from the egg shells until the acidity of the vinegar is neutralized. It really gets churning in the jar for the first few minutes as the two react together. After a week or so, you pour off the Calcium enriched liquid off and use that as a concentrate to add to water. I use one TBSP per gallon of water and 1 TSP of Epsom Salt per gallon and viola, homemade Cal/Mag.

Does anyone have any experience with using this homemade version of the commercial products? I would be curious as to what the experts here have to say about this.

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I have no idea why you would want to try and make something that is like 15 bucks a gallon at the hydro store.

I dunno, it may be that I am on a fixed income and need to save $ when I can. Or perhaps I am very rural, 30+ miles to the nearest grocery store and 4 hours drive to the nearest hydro store. Ya, maye that is it.

SweetLeafGrow said:

I dunno, it may be that I am on a fixed income and need to save $ when I can. Or perhaps I am very rural, 30+ miles to the nearest grocery store and 4 hours drive to the nearest hydro store. Ya, maye that is it.

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Then just use the sun for your lights and you will not need cal mag maybe?

SweetLeafGrow said:

Greetings Cultivators-

I recently found a tutorial on making homemade Cal/Mag. Basically, you take egg shells and crush them up and then add a cup or two of white vinegar to a glass jar. The vinegar reacts with the Calcium in the egg shells and from what I understand, leeches the Calcium from the egg shells until the acidity of the vinegar is neutralized. It really gets churning in the jar for the first few minutes as the two react together. After a week or so, you pour off the Calcium enriched liquid off and use that as a concentrate to add to water. I use one TBSP per gallon of water and 1 TSP of Epsom Salt per gallon and viola, homemade Cal/Mag.

Does anyone have any experience with using this homemade version of the commercial products? I would be curious as to what the experts here have to say about this.

Click to expand...

It makes sense the the recipe you describe would work.

SweetLeafGrow said:

Greetings Cultivators-

I recently found a tutorial on making homemade Cal/Mag. Basically, you take egg shells and crush them up and then add a cup or two of white vinegar to a glass jar. The vinegar reacts with the Calcium in the egg shells and from what I understand, leeches the Calcium from the egg shells until the acidity of the vinegar is neutralized. It really gets churning in the jar for the first few minutes as the two react together. After a week or so, you pour off the Calcium enriched liquid off and use that as a concentrate to add to water. I use one TBSP per gallon of water and 1 TSP of Epsom Salt per gallon and viola, homemade Cal/Mag.

Does anyone have any experience with using this homemade version of the commercial products? I would be curious as to what the experts here have to say about this.

Click to expand...

I thought black strap molessas can be used for cal/mag

How do you know the amount of calcium in the leftover liquid, and what form of calcium is it? Is it even usable for plants? Also, the amount of money you spend on eggs for the shells, vinegar and epsom salt to make it would probably be the same as just buying a bottle of cal/mag?

Not trying to be rude, it just seems very inefficient and inaccurate, but I hope it works for you.

Thanks everyone for your comments! I wanted to hear others thoughts so thanks! I also just wondered if anyone else here is doing this. I am on my first grow ever and been using this, twice now during watering. The first time I used it was when the seedlings were about 3 weeks from sprout. Then I did not use it again and thought that my organic soil should provide enough. However, one plant started having issues, which a forum member here advised that it looked like classic cal/mag def. I watered yesterday using this solution and so far today, the problem has began to resolve itself with this one plant and many of the leaves have already began to regain their nice green color. So it appears to me it works.

Call me an old miser but if I can do something for pennies as opposed to several dollars, that's not a hard decision. Does it work? I learned this from a guy on youtube named Bill Ward. I have watched some of his grows and he seems to know what he is talking about. It also seems to be working for me.

So, I don't know how much calcium is in the concentrate but I bet it's pretty substantial. Egg shells are not something I pay for. I pay for the eggs, then eat them, then normally toss the shells in the trash. We recently got chickens and we also crush them up and the chickens eat them along with the oyster shell we give them for calcium boost because they lay so many eggs. My wife also puts them in her garden that she has now, although those are going to be slow release calcium because they have not been broken down any. So yes, there is a lot of calcium in egg shells and from what I understand, the vinegar pulls it out of the shells in a chemical reaction and makes the calcium readily available for the plants. I'm no expert or a chemist, but that is how I understand it.

I mix this, one tablespoon with a gallon of distilled water along with one teaspoon of epsom salts. Vinegar and epsom salt are dirt cheap and something we have around the house anyway.

Thanks again ya'all!

That's cool bro, I think it is a great idea to use food waste as fertilizer for plants, and your right, vinegar and epsom salt are dirt cheap and we all live different lifestyles, what works for me might not work for you , and vice versa.

I’ve used these, 1/gallon crushed

Hello MB, HOW DID YOU USE your 1 tablet to 1 gal solution? What did it do? THANK YOU WHACKIN

whackin said:

Hello MB, HOW DID YOU USE your 1 tablet to 1 gal solution? What did it do? THANK YOU WHACKIN

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Just watered with it but bought cal-mag in the end and havent needed any since.