Using eggshells in the garden can help provide calcium to plants and can also help fight off blossom end rot in some plants, such as tomatoes, squash, and peppers.
Before using the egg shells, rinse them out first. Doing so will help to keep unwanted animals away and will also assure that the shells don’t have a bad odor.
By crushing the eggshells with your hand, compared to pulverizing them in a blender, you will achieve sharp edges. These sharp edges can help deter crawling pests in your garden, such as slugs. They won’t want to crawl on or near the sharp edges, and if they do…well, they shouldn’t survive.
I used eggshells to start some seeds indoors this year and have been sharing the ups and downs on my blog, LL Farm. Click HERE to see what I planted.
This was a new adventure for me and my first attempt was a failure. You can read about it HERE. Yes, I failed the first time, but as the saying goes, ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try again’.
When that first little sprout appeared, I was so happy! I jumped for joy, I did the happy dance, I talked to that baby, and yes, I took a picture. See that tiny purple thing in the picture above?
That was just the beginning…every single eggshell had seedlings popping up. It may sound quirky, but I loved watching it unfold…every day was something new…
a stem…a leaf…a young plant emerging…all from a tiny seed!
When the seedlings started to outgrow the eggshells, I transplanted them into larger containers. When I transplanted them, I crushed the eggshell and mixed it right into the soil. Read how I thinned and transplanted the seedlings HERE.
The next stage will be hardening them off to be planted in the garden.
5 Comments
We also pulverized egg shells and put them in the bottom of the holes as we planted each tomato plant. In the morning, all the plants had been dug up, were laying on their side and the egg shells were mostly gone. Minimal damage to the plants, thank goodness, but all dug up. Skunk? Raccoon?
Eggshells don’t decompose very fast, which is why people pulverize them before adding them to the garden for their calcium. You can find pieces of eggshell in your compost bin when using the the soil months later – even a year later!
Eggshells don’t break down & contribute calcium to soil unless they’re pulverized. And I’m not sure how successful that even is.
Put egg shells in the compost pile to start breaking them down, do it year round and eventually you will start releasing calcium in the soil and calcium is great for plants. Tomatoes benefit from calcium greatly.
I used egg shells in my garden. Put them in the whole and planted the tomatoes. The next morning all the tomato plants were laying on the ground. A skunk had dug up the plants to get to the egg shells. Didn’t hurt the plants much but just be aware.