Good thing I’m better at gardening than embedding pictures into my blog.  I wanted the two pictures side by side, but after 15 minutes of alterations, I gave up.  Anyway, you get the idea.

 

 

I thought I would share a little gardening secret.

 

We save our eggshells, rinse and dry them, then grind them up in an old coffee grinder.  Of course, we need to wear a good filtration mask because the particles are small and sharp.  Don’t want to breathe in that.

 

Anyway, the reason we do all that is to add calcium to our soil.  The tiny particles break down faster than big chunks of eggshell (which can take years.)  This way, we add it to the soil, and the plants can utilize it almost immediately.  

 

Plants need calcium in their “veins” to facilitate the uptake of nutrients, just like we need calcium in our bloodstream to promote optimum health.  Commercial fertilizers only provide nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.  So for good soil health we need to add a few other ingredients, and calcium is a big one.

 

Calcium is available as a nutrient for plants, in bone meal, lime, and some other organic sources.  But why BUY calcium when we have it right here?  Call me “Cheap-le-stiltskin” if you like, but I love using what we have.

 

Oh, yeah…we have noticed better gardens since we started adding eggshells to our soil, which is the point.

 

 

HAPPY GARDENING!!!