Sometimes planting a garden is easy, but actually getting a crop to grow properly and yield fruits, vegetables, pretty flowers or aromatic herbs? Now that can be a totally different story. That's why we're always looking for any helpful little tricks to try to help ensure our gardens grow into their full potential.

Gardener and TikToker content creator Rachael Eppley (@hey.im.rach) started a “in case your mom didn’t teach you” gardening series on her channel, which is where she gives interesting tips, tricks and hacks on how to be a gardener.

Her most recent trick is for how to get a ton of tomatoes from your plants, and it's genius. Her secret? Planting an egg with your tomato plant.

How To Do It

You want to start as you usually would when planting a tomato plant—digging a hole.

Then, before placing the tomato plant into the ground, add a raw egg into the hole and smash it up. Next, take your plant and remove any low-hanging branches, break up the roots, and place them in the ground and cover with dirt as usual. Finally, water it and watch it grow.

While Eppley uses a small tomato plant, you could in theory apply this to planting tomato seeds or for a tomato plant in a large pot. For the seeds, you would just want to dig the hole, place and smash the egg, cover it with more dirt and then sow the seeds.

For a pot, you would want to put some dirt in the bottom, the egg on top of that, then the plant and finally cover with more dirt. Again, while these options could work in theory, planting in the ground would be best if possible.

Why Would an Egg Help?

The idea behind this trick is that the calcium in the eggshells will break down over time and help prevent blossom end rot, which happens when there is a lack of calcium and causes sunken and mushy spots on tomato and pepper plants.

According to a Reddit thread in r/gardening, this hack only works if you crush up the shells enough (hence the smashing of the egg) to ensure the nutrients reach the soil.

One commenter said they used this trick last year and had no rot in their plants.

“I got hundreds of perfect cherries and several beefsteaks,” they wrote. “The biggest note I read is that people tend to just crush the egg shells, which isn't enough. You have to grind your egg shells into pretty much powder so the nutrients absorb quicker, and dump a handful in before you put your plant in.”

Whether you want to take the time to crush only the eggshells or just want to throw the whole egg into your plant, it may be worth it if you already have some eggs in your fridge that need to be used. 

After all, all you have to risk is growing a healthy, beautiful tomato plant.