People who eat a lot of eggs, the end’s up having a ton of eggshells. If you are one of those people, you might want to read this article to the end. You can have tons of eggshells in your kitchen bin, now you can throw them away or you can make them gold for your kitchen garden.
These eggshells are great for your garden and you can use them in different ways. They can be fertilizer or a DIY seed starter kit for you. Keep reading to find out the amazing uses of eggshells in your garden.
1: Uses Them As Fertilizers
If crops like tomatoes, peppers, and eggplants lack calcium, it can be a problem for them. Blossom end rot is the main issue for calcium lacking plants.
These plants with end rot problems can be saved by using eggshells. The plants will absorb calcium from eggshells and grow happily. There are two different ways to use eggshells for these crops:
- Crush some eggshells and put them in the holes where you are planting your seedlings. That’s how you will save your plants from future end rot.
- If your plants are big and have end rot, just crush some eggshells and sprinkle them around the base of your plants. You may have to sprinkle eggshells around plants every two weeks. That depends on the health situation of your plants.
2: DIY Pest Deterrent
Pests like slugs, snails, and cutworms are tricky work. They can attack your kitchen garden and destroy them during your holidays. Now there are different chemicals that you can use to kill them, but those chemicals are harmful to the environment and earth, as we all know that.
Here is an eggshell method to get rid of pests. Crush some eggshells, do not crush them too much (powder of eggshells is no good here). Small pieces of eggshells have sharp edges to keep pests away from your kitchen garden.
Sprinkle crushed eggshells around your favorite plants and it will keep them away. Sharp edges won’t kill them but they can harm their soft bodies.
3: Make Compost Out Of Eggshells
Compost is one of the most sexist things in the world for gardeners. A good garden always has compost to use and a great garden always has a compost bin to make its own compost.
You can make compost out of any kitchen and garden wastes. Click here to learn to make your own organic compost at home out of kitchen wastes. But here I will share the use of eggshells in a compost bin.
Just put eggshells in your compost bin with other kitchen and garden wastes. Eggshells will decompose very fastly and add a good amount of calcium in your final product. This final product will be great for calcium loving plants like tomatoes and peppers.
If you also have a worm compost bin in your garden, you can also put eggshells in that bin. Eggshells will optimize the pH level of the bin for better worm composting.
4: A Cheap Seed Tray
This one is not new, this use of eggshells is wandering around all over the internet. Seed trays are excellent to start your seeds indoors. Starting seeds indoors has numbers of benefits like you will have a heads up of weeks and you can try different varieties of your favorite crops etc.
If you eat a lot of eggs and you can eggshells and egg cartons, you can make a great seed tray.
- Just fill your eggshells with seed starter soil or potting soil, sow the seeds in them.
- Give them water and put them in front of a window with a good amount of sunlight.
- When your seedlings are good in size, transplant them in their final location. You don’t have to pull them out of shells during transplant.
- You can plant the seedlings with the eggshells in your soil. Eggshells will decompose with the passage of time and add some extra nutrients (calcium) in the soil.
Also Read:
- How To Make Potting Soil At Home
- How to Grow Strawberry from Seeds at Home
- How To Grow Chillies From Seeds
5: Food For Chicken
If you have chicken in your garden, you have to feed them a good supplement so the hens can produce a good amount of eggs. For that make a powder of eggshells and put it in the regular feed of your chicken.
Calcium in the powder of eggshells will be a good addition in the supplement of your chicken especially for hens as they lay eggs and need a good amount of calcium for their eggshells.
Also Read: How To Start Raised Bed Vegetable Gardening For Beginners?
6: Mulch
We all know the benefits of organic mulch in the garden. Mulch can stop the growth of weeds, hold water in the hot summer days by reducing evaporation, and save the roots of plants from frost in winter.
Crushed eggshells can do the work of mulch. It will also decompose to add some calcium in the soil and keep the slugs and snails away from your plants. Eggshells mulch is great for plants in pots, especially for houseplants.