I have here Epsom salt, a bag of it, which is purported to do
many things in the garden. I'm talking make tomatoes bigger, cure
blossom end rot, destroy fungal diseases, just make your plants
stronger. So in this video, we're going to actually look at. This and discuss it and
perhaps bust a little myth. Kevin Espiritu here from
Epic Gardening. Man, this is one of the most
pervasive things that you. See recommended in gardening.
And so I figured today, let's just look and
see if it all holds up. Because all the things I just
mentioned – tomatoes being bigger, the blossom end rot being cured, all that kind of stuff – if
you put them all together, how is one compound actually
doing all that in the garden? It turns out the answer
might be that it's. Not. So cultivate that Like
button and instead of Epsom salts. Me personally, myself, Kevin Espiritu from Epic Gardening
will bless upon your garden no fungal diseases for the rest of
the season.
That is a very. Very big incentive to click Like.
And let's get into the video. So why. Is Epsom salt so popular? What
happened? How did they even come to be? You kind of have to go pretty far
back, almost 420 years back to Surrey, England. There's a town called Epsom and there
was a villager in that town called Henry Wicker. And I guess he was out tending to his
cows and he saw a cow put his foot in the mud. So it left a hoof print and
that hoof print filled up with water.
And he said, oh cool, free water. If I dig a bigger hole I can probably
get more water. So that's what he did. And then when he came back, he
noticed it was filled with water, so mission accomplished. But the
cows weren't drinking the water, which made him curious. Curious
enough to try the water. Weird decision but nevertheless, that's why we have Epsom salt because
he found it was pretty bitter. And also he found it was kind of a
laxative. And so he said, you know what? This is magical water. This is miraculous water and I'm going
to start really touting its benefits to the world, or at least to England. So what happened is Epsom became pretty
famous for this magical water that they thought was Epsom salt
that we see here today.
But turns out testing in the 1900's
revealed that it wasn't magnesium sulfate, which is what Epsom salt is, it was
calcium sulfate. So lo and behold, they were a little bit duped.
Nevertheless, we come to Epsom salt. So let's talk about some of the reasons
people want to use it and why it's really not a good idea.
Benefit number one, or so they say about using Epsom salt,
is to help prevent blossom end rot, B-E-R on your tomatoes. Which is of course when the
blossom end doesn't look so great.
And the reason why this happens is
typically a calcium deficiency. Well, what does Epsom salt created
with? Magnesium sulfate. There's no calcium within that at all. The other secret about blossom end rot
is that it doesn't really typically mean that your soil is deficient in calcium. It's typically the result of
improper watering technique. You can see I've got drip
irrigation on this bed. So you know, deep watering on your tomatoes
at a somewhat regular pace
is going to be the way to go. That will help
prevent it because it's very, very rare that your soil would
actually be deficient in calcium.
Let alone adding Epsom salt, it can actually exacerbate the problem
because there's magnesium and sulfur in it. And if you add too much
magnesium specifically, you can actually throw off the
nutrient absorption of other nutrients. Specifically, things like calcium
which would cause a deficiency, which would cause blossom end rot.
So this is a really pervasive myth. Do not use Epsom salt to prevent
or control or fix blossom end rot. Reason number two that people like to
recommend Epsom salt is because they say that it will help you prevent pest or
disease if you spray a soluble mixture of it on your plants.
No study,
unfortunately, has shown
that that is the case. There's no real good
evidence to support that. And I think the reason why people probably
do it is everyone wants to use a home remedy, wants to use something cheap from the
store to solve a problem in the garden or even in the house with all these cleaning
hacks that exist. And the truth is, if you're dealing with a pest or
disease, let's say I have powdery mildew, right. Or let's say I have
aphids, cabbage moths, tomato hornworms – all of these
require a different approach.
The pest life cycle works differently
or the disease's life cycle works differently. There's going to be a
better way to combat one than another. Tomato hornworms, oftentimes
just hand pick those off. Aphids, blast them off with cold
water. If that doesn't work, an insecticidal soap can work. So you really want to target your pest
and disease control to that pest or disease and not just use a blanket
solution that actually doesn't do much. And in fact, it can sometimes even
scorch the leaves of the plants. So I've busted a couple of these
already. You might be saying, well what about just
using it as a fertilizer? Can it help boost the growth of your
plants? And the answer is yes, in very, very specific circumstances. The way
that it's typically used, or can be used, is as a soluble way to add some magnesium
and maybe a little bit of sulfur to crops that are grown in acidic
sandy soil in a very intensive way. That's probably not you.
It's definitely not me. Even these crops back here aren't
really in those conditions.
Most of the time you're
going to be deficient in some
of the macronutrients like nitrogen, phosphorus, potassium. Sometimes even having too much of these
nutrients can make it look like you don't have magnesium, but you actually do. So if you have too much
phosphorus in your soil, it can make it seem like you
don't have magnesium. In fact, magnesium levels are completely fine. It's somewhat rare to have a magnesium
deficiency and certainly even rarer to have a sulfur deficiency, which would be the only reason
you would fertilize with it. So in like large scale intensive
commercial applications, I've seen it be used and I've heard that
it has been used because it's a great soluble way to add some magnesium.
But for us here, for these peppers, for these beans, you really
don't need it as a fertilizer. Something people will say
about Epsom salt is that, okay, well it will help make more and
bigger and better fruit. And again, it's kind of not true. I mean if
we think about bushier tomatoes, bigger tomatoes, that kind of thing.
Well, to get a tomato bushier, typically you're using a lot of nitrogen
there cause that's really responsible for a lot of the vegetative growth.
And then for the fruits and the
flowers – phosphorus, potassium. That's why they're the macronutrients, they're the ones that are
the most needed by the plant. Another thing that's interesting
is when it comes to roses. So this sort of came about from
the Rose Society in 1930 to 1960. A lot of the rose growers swore that
adding Epsom salt to their roses, you know I love to grow roses now, was something that helped improve the
blooming and the sort of production of the roses. And unfortunately also again, they did studies on it and it
didn't really show anything.
So in order to boost the blooming and
the fruiting and the flowering of your plant, you really just want all
the macronutrients and
micronutrients the plant needs in ample quantities. There's sort
of this sort of macro myth, I guess, of if you give a plant more, it
will use all of it. It really won't. If it has enough, it's not
going to then use more. That's something that's kind
of weird. Overfertilizing, you definitely don't need to do and
this would be a good way to do it, unfortunately. Another thing that people will say
that Epsom salt does is it improves germination or it speeds up germination. Or gives the plant nutrients
during the germination process. A seed is everything that the plant
needs at the start of its life. You have your seed leaves. There's enough nutrition in the seed to
get it through quite a bit of its early life, you know, a week or two before you really need to
start giving it either soil or some sort of fertilizer.
So you don't
really need to, you know, water it with Epsom salt as you're
doing this. It doesn't do a whole lot. The seed has everything it
needs. And in fact, I mean, all it really needs from the
outside world if we think about it, is sometimes seeds are light triggered. Sometimes they need some sort
of abrasion or scarification. And sometimes they need to be soaked in
water so that water actually penetrates the seed hull and kickstarts the
metabolic process where the seed actually starts to germinate. But that's it.
You don't need to add Epsom salt. Another thing that people will say is,
you know what, hey, it works for me. And I'm all for that. If you think it
works for you, just go ahead and use it. Just ignore this video.
However, they'll say, you know it's not really harmful
to plants.
What's the harm? Well, the harm is it's extremely water soluble. And so if your plants don't
need magnesium or sulfur, it's just running straight through
and going into groundwater and you're basically polluting the groundwater
system. It's just not a good idea. You don't really need to do that. Some people will also say that it helps
with preventing and killing weeds. The only thing that we've seen to
even show that is when you mix it with vinegar, and it's really the
vinegar that's killing the weeds. The magnesium sulfate, the Epsom salt
just is kind of along for the ride. It doesn't really do much. The question is why do things like
this persist in the garden, you know, if it doesn't work? Study after study has shown over
maybe a hundred years or so, that nothing really of benefit
is coming from Epsom salt, but yet many people still do it.
Well,
I think it's probably just tradition. You know, you've learned it from
your grandmother or your grandfather. You started doing it, didn't really
question it. And lo and behold, you've got a bucket of Epsom salt in
your garden trying to sweeten up your tomatoes. So what to do then if you're not gonna
use Epsom salt and maybe we've burst the bubble a little bit here for
you? I'm sorry about that. But the answer is really simple, in gardening a lot of the
times it is pretty simple. There's not a lot of flourish to it, and it's just adding good quality
organic matter to your soil. So you can do that with
organic granular fertilizer. You could do it with coffee grounds.
You could do it with compost. There's a lot of different ways to do
it. We have videos on all that stuff. And then just let your garden do
the work. That's all you have to do.
You don't have to mix in
some fancy potions and Epsom
salts and stuff like that. That's it. So hopefully this was helpful. Share with a friend who has been
using Epsom salt in the garden, and we'll see you on the next one. Good
luck in the garden and keep on growing..
