In this article, I’m going to show you how to prepare eggshells for your garden. Let’s get started.
Overview
The nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium are the most important nutrients for plant growth, calcium is also necessary for the formation of healthy “bones”—the plant’s cell walls. Eggshells, which are made up of calcium carbonate, are a great way to get this mineral into the soil.
When you don’t break up your eggshells, they take up a lot of space in your compost bin or garbage can.
Unless you take the time to smash them, their lovely oval forms – so great for holding their contents – don’t flatten out properly in the trash.
Many people toss them in the trash without giving them a second thought. Every year, the United States alone sends 150,000 tons of eggshells to landfills, according to Paula Felps of Earth911. If you do the arithmetic, that’s roughly a million pounds of these oval marvels filling landfills every day, not every year. Yikes!
How To Prepare Eggshells For Garden
Plants require calcium to grow. Eggshells can be used to fertilize the soil and offer this essential mineral to your garden.
Knowing how to prepare eggshells for the garden entails sterilizing, crushing, and adding the appropriate number of eggshells to your soil. This is the key to growing generally healthier plants, and it’s free!
Eggshells in the Oven
Baking eggshells before using them in your garden aids in the absorption of nutrients by your plants’ root systems. So, if you don’t mind waiting many months for your plants to benefit, you don’t need to bake them first. It’s also simpler to smash eggshells if you bake them first!
Baking eggshells help to completely dry them out, particularly the membrane within the egg. The membrane can be dried out to make it easier to smash the eggs.
When you crack an egg, wash it and save the shell to add to your eggshell collection. It’s time to sterilize your eggshells once you’ve saved enough to line a baking tray.
You can store them in your oven if you use a metal baking tray. When you’re ready to bake, take them out. Place the eggshells back in the oven after baking (during the cool down of your oven). This will aid in the eradication of any microorganisms.
Read also: Can You have Too Many Eggshell ls In Your Compost?
Eggshells Crushed
After you’ve dried your eggshells by baking them in the oven or heating them in the microwave, crush them to make the nutrients more accessible to your plants.
However, there are several ways of smashing eggshells.
At this point, you can toss the baked eggshells into a blender, which will quickly crush them into a fine powder. Once you’ve broken them down into smaller pieces, mound the parts together and continue mashing them down with the spoon until they’re all around the same size.
You can keep them in a quart mason jar until you need them. Another excellent use for these crushed eggshells is to feed them to your chickens instead of oyster shell. It boosts their calcium intake, resulting in lovely, hard eggshells!
How Do You Prepare Eggshells For Gardening?
You may bake them by laying the eggshells on a cookie sheet and baking them on low for about an hour at 250-275 degrees. Pull them out after an hour or so in the oven and set them aside to cool. For details, learn more about preparing eggshells for compost.
References
- “Adding egg shells to compost” retrieved from MSU extension
- “Application of eggshell wastes as valuable and utilizable products: A review” retrieved from ResearchGate
- “Efficacy of reproduction and vermicomposting ability of eggshell powder using Eudrilus eugeniae” retrieved from here
