What about hydroponics to generate organic matter to compost for the garden beds?Yes, when I lived in the Midwest US, that was definitely an issue I dealt with. But after living in other parts of the world—like Asia and the Middle East—I realized that the soil composition and mineral balance vary dramatically by region. While gypsum was incredibly effective at breaking up the dense clay back in the U.S., I quickly found myself going down a rabbit hole in other climates, trying to figure out how to create a proper balance in the soil. As if I used gypsum here, it will break up the clay, but create more calcium- however most is massive raised beds (about 17ft off the ground), so much of that was from quarries- which again, even tho it was a type of clay (rock hard- need a jack hammer hard) it actaully needed more organic material (most expensive here).
With my tomatoes here: it is not about growing, my amendments are brilliant... it is the pearly eyed thrashers that eat them the moment they are vaguely ripe!
What worked in one place didn’t always translate to another, and it became clear that improving soil isn’t just about structure—it’s about understanding the full mineral and nutrient profile in context.
I think the gypsum should help you- you can also sprinkle around the tomatoes, and water it in
You might try letting them run out of eggshells completely. Mine wouldn't eat any oyster shell if they had eggshells or thought some was coming but would if they didn't. I don't like that option very much but I don't like thin shells either.
'Rum is cheaper than water here'. We are going to set up hydroponics on a very few raised beds, our beds are 75ft poured concrete.... but everything needs to be shipped in (not like we have a tractor supply or home depot), but it is too large- 1 acre of planted material.
Haha, exactly. We collect all our own water, which goes straight into our cistern. There are no municipal services here—no trash pickup, mail delivery, electricity, or water supply. Some people do have WAPA, but that only covers electricity, and even then it’s far from reliable, with multiple outages a day under normal circumstances.
Oh that makes more sense than sea-faring chickens. It sounds like they are using the coral as grit as well as a calcium source. How many generations of chickens or how many years have chickens been roaming freely on the island? You might have said but I missed it. I wonder if they have adapted to the high calcium intake in some way. I imagine there is blood work from landlocked chickens you can compare your data to and let us know! My geology brain is very rusty since I’ve been out of the business for almost a decade but I think this is very interesting.
No one can pinpoint the exact year chickens first arrived on St. Thomas, but they most likely came over during the colonial period, brought by the Dutch or Danish when they began settling the island in the 1600's. It’s safe to say that ever since, chickens have been busy making themselves right at home—and ensuring no one here ever needs an alarm clock.
If I remember correctly what I've read about excess calcium, different chickens show different levels of problems, even when they are all eating the same food and all the same breed. So a high-calcium environment could just select in the direction of higher tolerance. The least tolerant ones might have died long ago, meaning all the current chickens are descended from the ones that were more able to tolerate the available conditions (including high calcium).
