How to dissolve Calcium Sulfate?

[justblazen]

Hi farmers,
I recently ordered some Calcium Sulfate from JR Peters to increase my Calcium and Sulphur and realized this shit is super difficult to dissolve. Does anyone know of any tricks or ways to dissolve this grainy stuff? I usually pre mix my Jacks professional hydro, cal nitrate, and epsoms the day before, but this stuff looks like it might have been a waste of money unless I can figure it out. Any help from the pros would be much appreciated.

 

[Coir]

The solubility of Calcium Sulfate(gypsum) in water is approximately .24 grams per 100 grams of water. So, there is really no point in trying to use it in a soluble fertilizer mix. It is great as a soil additive especially in soils that have a high clay content but it will take a long time to breakdown and add available Ca that plants can use.
You should be able to get all the Ca you need from Calcium Nitrate and more than enough sulfur from the Epsom Salts. There is really no need to use anything else. If you feel that you are too high in N from the Jacks, then you can add some Calcium Chloride in place of the Calcium Nitrate but that can introduce some other issues of you use too much.

 

[justblazen]

The solubility of Calcium Sulfate(gypsum) in water is approximately .24 grams per 100 grams of water. So, there is really no point in trying to use it in a soluble fertilizer mix. It is great as a soil additive especially in soils that have a high clay content but it will take a long time to breakdown and add available Ca that plants can use.
You should be able to get all the Ca you need from Calcium Nitrate and more than enough sulfur from the Epsom Salts. There is really no need to use anything else. If you feel that you are too high in N from the Jacks, then you can add some Calcium Chloride in place of the Calcium Nitrate but that can introduce some other issues of you use too much.

Thanks for responding. You pin pointed then problem w the cal nitrate being to high in nitrogen. Thought I had my solution w the cal sulfate

 

[Coir]

How many grams of Calcium Nitrate are you adding now? You can replace some of the Calcium Nitrate with Calcium Chloride. As an example, 3.3 grams of Calcium Nitrate in one gallon of water gives you 137ppm N and 170ppm Calcium. If you reduce that to 1.75 grams you reduce the N to 72ppm and the Ca to 90ppm. Adding 1 gram of CaCl back to this you return to 170ppm Ca with no additional N. These are just example numbers but you can see how the substitution works. I have no idea what levels you normally run so you would have to adjust accordingly.

 

[Herb Forester]

I've been down this road, and haven't found a practical source of soluble Ca besides CaNO3. You might consider amending the gypsum and then fertigating with an amino N source, but it's tricky and takes a little work to dial in. I only use CaCl for foliar sprays (Quantrill warns that overloading Cl can impart bad flavors and burn). Do you know how much free Ca is in your water supply?