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What's a cow have to do with the garden? EVERYTHING! After all, we depend on cows for things like milk and even manure and cows depend on plants!
Milk is high in calcium. Calcium (Ca) is a mineral. Plants need calcium for growth of young roots and shoots. It makes cell walls healthy. You can tell that they may not be getting enough calcium if the edges of new leaves curl or die. On tomatoes you see “blossom end rot” which looks like a sunken, decayed spot on the end of the tomato farthest from the stem.
You need calcium to maintain healthy, strong bones, support proper functioning of nerves and muscles and to help your blood clot.
Calcium is found in the soil. In fact, it is the fifth most common element in the earth (behind Oxygen (O) 46.6%, Silicon (Si) 27.7%, Aluminum (Al) 8.1%, and Iron (Fe) 5.0%) making up 3.8% of the earth's crust. We often see calcium in rocks as calcite, dolomite and gypsum.
We need calcium, too: to maintain healthy, strong bones, to support proper functioning of nerves and muscles and to help our blood clot.
We can't rocks and neither can plants. The good news is that soil microbes need calcium too, so they eat calcium compounds, converting them into a form plants can use. Plants take up the calcium, cows eat the plants and we drink the milk from the cows. Just another magical thread in the web of life.
