During the winter months, crush the shells by using a mortar and pestle and sprinkle over the container or garden border where you will plant come springtime. Alternatively, you can add crumbled eggshell directly into the bottoms of your planting holes.
You can use eggshells to make a fertilizer tea that will add liquid calcium to your garden. Boil a gallon of water and add ten to twenty clean, dry eggshells. Let the shells sit in the water overnight, then strain them out. Pour two cups of liquid onto each plant.
Eggshells are rich in calcium, and this makes them a common ingredient of commercial organic fertilizers. But there's no need to pay for the nutrients these products could bring to your soil. Simply crumble the empty eggshells roughly, then scatter them over your flower and vegetable beds.
Which plants shouldn't you try this with? Don't add eggshell fertilizer to plants that prefer acidic soil, like blueberries. Ericaceous plants such as mountain laurel, pieris and azaleas also fall into that category. In extreme cases, low acidity for plants could impact their overall health and/or the resulting crop.
During the winter months, crush the shells by using a mortar and pestle and sprinkle over the container or garden border where you will plant come springtime. Alternatively, you can add crumbled eggshell directly into the bottoms of your planting holes.
You can simply add crushed eggshells in or on the soil as a natural way of providing your indoor plants with extra calcium. Another advantage is that the eggshells will also help to aerate the soil.
Eggshell Benefits
As it happens, eggshells can provide all the calcium carbonate the soil needs, which helps to lower the soil's pH level and make it more alkaline as opposed to acidic. This is incredibly beneficial for plant growth because many plants prefer to grow in soil that has low acidity.
Just as when putting egg shells in planting holes, the more finely ground the powder, the faster the nutrients will leach down to the roots. For topical use, a good rule of thumb is to use about a tablespoon or two of pulverized egg shells per plant.
Eggshells ground to a fine powder yield the quickest results, while large chunks of eggshells will take at least a year to break down making their stored calcium plant available perhaps the next growing season.
Decorative plants (i.e., your collection of succulents) don't need as much calcium as food-growing plants, but all plants will benefit from the minerals in eggshell tea. “It's kind of like an all-purpose fertilizer, and the plant will pull up what it can use, what it's in need of,” Savio said.
Should You Wash Eggshells Before Composting? It is not a requirement to wash eggshells before composting them, but you definitely need to. First, cleaning them speeds up how fast they will break down inside the composting bin. Secondly, cleaning them is important so as not to attract animal pests.
Because it takes several months for eggshells to break down and be absorbed by a plant's roots, it is recommended that they be tilled into the soil in fall. More shells can be mixed into your soil in the spring.
Clean Eggshells are Safe Eggshells
Unless the only place the eggshells are going is into the compost bucket, I rinse them well and let them dry in a sunny windowsill.
Combine the two together, crush the eggshells by hand even more and sprinkle the mixture across the soil bed. Repeat the process every several months or at the start of a fresh growing season. The important thing is to not overdo it. Too much fertilizer can overwhelm and distress the plants.
Used Tea Bags can slightly lower the pH level in pots and provide the plants themselves with vital nutrients and minerals. Just open up the Tea Bags, sprinkle in the leaves and allow your green friends to flourish.
Banana peels contain: calcium, which promotes root growth helps add oxygen to your soil. magnesium, which assists with photosynthesis. sulphur, which helps plants develop strong roots and repel pests.
The key is mixing pulverized eggshells with white vinegar. They react, and create water soluble calcium. This form of calcium is immediately available to your plant. This is needed to stop blossom end rot.
In most cases, the grounds are too acidic to be used directly on soil, even for acid-loving plants like blueberries, azaleas and hollies. Coffee grounds inhibit the growth of some plants, including geranium, asparagus fern, Chinese mustard and Italian ryegrass.
Some people prefer to 'bake' their shells beforehand to remove any moisture or lingering bacteria. You can also 'batch brew' your own fertilizer by mixing your crushed eggshells with white vinegar. Doing a bit at a time, mix one part eggshell to one part vinegar.