STOP Using Epsom Salt in Your Garden 🚫

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? And it turns out the answer might be that it's not. So cultivate that Like button. And instead of Epsom salt, 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? And 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 salts that we see here today. But turns out testing in the 1900s 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 salts. 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 is 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 pests 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've had 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 into a 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. 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 a 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 it 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 so that the seed actually starts to germinate. But that's it. You don't need to add Epsom salt. Another thing 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. Don't, 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 does, it's kind of long 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 maybe a hundred years or so that nothing really of benefit is coming from Epsom salts, but yet many people still do it. Well, I think it's probably just tradition. You know, you've learned it from your grandmother, 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 going to use Epsom salt? And maybe we 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 can do it with coffee grounds, you can 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 it with a friend who's 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.