Walking on Eggshells « Not Dabbling In Normal

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Walking on Eggshells

July 12, 2009 by Alan from Roberts Roost

Before throwing your eggshells into the compost heap, consider using them in a few different ways:

Shells can be pulverized and spread directly onto your garden. The sharp shells discourage cut worms and slugs from attacking your plants.
Cats don’t like the feel of the shells either, so it helps prevent cats from using your garden or flower pots as litter boxes.
They provide valuable calcium to your tomatoes which can help prevent blossom end rot.
Steep the shells in boiling water, allow to cool and use as compost tea on your plants. You can also use the water from hard boiling eggs in this manner.
Use eggshells instead of gravel in the bottom of pots to help with drainage. Its much lighter, making some of those pots easier to move.
Add pulverized shells to your seed mixtures, it discourages birds and other small animals from snacking on your seeds.

Posted in Gardening | 7 Comments

7 Responses

on July 12, 2009 at 7:18 am | Reply Eggshells in the Garden « Two Frog Home

[...] Kathie under Entrepreneur Leave a Comment We’re putting eggshells to good use over at Not Dabbling in Normal today, hope to see you there! [...]
on July 12, 2009 at 9:50 am | Reply Carrie

Thank you for the very helpful tips! I am going to try one of them next time instead of taking them straight to the compost!
on July 12, 2009 at 10:22 am | Reply Gretchen

An old farm family I know taught us to bake eggshells and then give them back to the chickens, for the minerals. If the chickens have access to raw eggshells it encourages them to peck at their own eggs, but the baked ones don’t have that effect.
on July 12, 2009 at 1:36 pm | Reply tansy

i feed them back to my chickens, w/o baking and w/o any problems of the chickens breaking any more than usual…they generally get broken by 5-6 hens piling into 1 nest.

feeding the chickens gives them calcium to keep future laid eggs from becoming soft and weak.

great tips for garden use though when chickens aren’t around to consume them!! i may even steal a few to sprinkle around the tomatoes.
on July 12, 2009 at 10:29 pm | Reply Ron

Interesting… I’ve never put them in the garden directly, might try that. Like Tansy, we generally just put them in a paper bag, and when it’s full we crush them, then feed to the chickens. I figure they get plenty of calcium from eating leafy greens in the summer, but in winter it’s really their only source for it.

Ron
on July 13, 2009 at 6:43 am | Reply JodyM

I’m growing tomatoes in a new spot this year, and so far have found only one with blossom end rod (knock wood). I have a dozen egg shells I need to do this to, today.
on July 13, 2009 at 8:21 am | Reply Annette

Great post – I’ll stop composting my shells and take them out to the garden instead!