The Best Way To Use Egg Shells To Power Plants & Recharge Your Soil!

0:00Welcome to the Simple Garden Life Podcast, a program dedicated to keeping the art of gardening simple, fun, and always rewarding. Now here are your hosts, Jim and Mary Competty. Hello and welcome everybody to the Simple Garden Life Podcast. I am your co-host Jim Competty. And I'm Mary Competty. And together we are the dynamic duo today talking about the biggest mistake gardeners make with eggshells and more importantly, how to use eggshells correctly to power your garden and flower beds. And you know, we talk about eggshells non-stop on the website. We've done a podcast on eggshells and coffee grounds, Mary, but today we get so many emails about it. We really wanted to cover the subject of how to really use eggshells the right way. Right. With garden season coming up, it's the perfect time to talk about this topic. It is. And everybody that this is the Simple Garden Life website, you can follow our podcast on simplegardenlife.com.

1:00Just hit the podcast tab up there at the top and you can see all of our years of podcasts. This is our second episode of the 26th season and we've got a full slate this year and really, really excited. And today's subject is one of the ones that a lot of vegetable gardeners and flower gardeners should also be really aware of. Before we get into how to use them right, Mary, I think we have to talk about, you know, why eggshells are so incredible. There. There were one of the most commonly recommended organic ingredients for powering both your garden soil and your plants. Yeah. And for good reason. I mean, they're rich in calcium, which happens to be, you know, a big time nutrient for strong, plant cell walls, but it's also vital for the overall plant health. We've talked about this before. Most importantly, people associate a lack of calcium with blossom in rot. Right. And blossom in rot for those that don't know is that annoying little thing that comes up throughout the garden season. And when you think you have the perfect tomato or pepper growing on your plant and you go to pick it or you go to check it and you touch it and your finger goes right through

2:01the bottom of the tomato or pepper. Yeah. It's just exactly what it sounds like. The end of the tomato or pepper where the blossom was attached will start to rot away and it really ruins the entire fruit. Now, just to let people know, blossom in rot don't confuse that with the first few tomatoes of the season or the peppers of the season. Your plants are young. They're very mature. We always get a ton of emails and messages about, oh my gosh, my tomato plants just produce their first tomato and they've got blossom in rot. Remember that when they're young and immature, those first few tomatoes are probably likely going to have that. That's why we always tell people, pick those first few fruits off of your tomatoes or even your pepper plants and allow them to grow. But real blossom in rot is when that problem continues on through the spring and summer. Right. When you have those tomatoes and pepper plants that are doing that in the early season, it's most likely due that we're over fertilizing in the stores or that they're just young and immature and they haven't had a ability to absorb calcium correctly.

3:02Yeah, they really are. Let's talk about really what eggshells do in the long term for your soil and that calcium. Why are eggshells so important for this? Well, for starters, eggshells are 90% calcium carbonate. You're talking 9-10s of an eggshell is pure calcium. I mean, that is what can provide that to your plants and the soil they grow in. But here's the issue. Most gardeners don't use them in the way that maximizes as benefits for the crops this year. Right. And we've learned over the years as well. We used to use eggshells in every planting hole and we would just crush them up with our hands and throw them in the planting hole, which does provide some benefits for the tomatoes and plants in years to come, but not for this year's plants. Yeah. And why is that? Back to the famous compost pile. Have you ever thrown eggshells into your compost pile or for better part, thrown them into your soil? You go out one month, two months, three months later, and there's still bits and pieces of those eggshells. Why is that? Because they take a very long time to break down. And when they take a long time to break down, what's that mean for your plants?

4:04Means they're not going to get those nutrients because they haven't broken down in the soil where they can absorb the calcium from the eggshells to really help them. So the real secret is to making most out of your eggshells in your garden is how you prepare them. It really is. I mean, they can correct calcium deficiencies and they can help plants not have weak stems and curled leaves and poor fruiting. I mean, it's not even just for tomatoes and peppers. It is for flowers. Calcium is such an important part of the overall makeup of what the soil needs to be healthy and what plants need to be able to absorb. You know, overly wet soil, overly dry. So calcium has a hard time, so if you want to plant it. But there's a lot of times that there's just not the calcium in the soil that plants like tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, flowers, big time annuals like dreams, all of those that they just can't absorb it. And when they can't, then all the problems occur. However, when properly used eggshells provide a wonderful, slow release source of calcium

5:07throughout the growing season. Oh, I mean, it's one of the best. That's why we always talk about them. So what is this big mistake that we talk about? Well, we've already kind of hit on it a little bit. You know, many gardeners assume that tossing large chunks even semi-crushed egg pieces. I even saw last week, and you know if it's on the internet, it's true, right? Yeah, right. But I saw last week where you should just plant two whole eggs with every tomato plant. And I started digging it through it. I'm like, okay, you know, the yolk and things like that are going to have some benefits. Once you're not getting the calcium benefit from a whole way, put in a hole because, again, that crush shell is not going to break down. Egg shells take a long time to break down in the soil. I mean, especially when they're left in pieces. It can take months, even years for that calcium to become available to the plants. So that means that simply placing an egg shell on the planting hole, it's not going to provide any immediate benefits to the plants to that spot during the current season. So the question is, what makes egg shells beneficial for this year's garden?

6:09Well, there's a really simple thing. That delay that they have when they're breaking down is what causes it. So you have to help break those egg shells down a whole lot more to really help them absorb quickly into the soil and become a part of it. So let's take a break. And when we come back, we'll get to the way we handle our egg shells and how we plant them and how much we use. And then more importantly, how we start to store them all the time, year round, to really have egg shells on hand at any moment. We'll be right back after these messages. And we are back for the best way to use egg shells in the garden. And Mary, I guess, I mean, what is the secret? Well, to ensure your curtain garden always gets the full benefit of egg shells, it's actually best to grind them into a fine powder before adding them to the soil. But a lot of people say, okay, what does that mean or how do you do it? So, you know, it's actually very easy to do. Oh, yeah.

7:10You know, look, you can go the hard route. You can get the, what's it called? Immortal and pestle. Immortal and pestle. Immortal and pestle. I'm not the chef of the, of the two of us, but here's the, here's the really easy way. Get yourself an, an inexpensive coffee grinder. I mean, you can get them now for $18, $19, just the small, small hand ones and keep it around to, to pulverize egg shells. We use ours. You can put, we, we crush them by hand, you can probably put, I'm going to say what, six to eight eggshells, Mary and a little one, just like you're making coffee ground. Right. The important key here is, yes, we're, we're recommending using a coffee grinder or some kind of grinder, but it really needs to be dedicated use to the egg shells. Yeah. Unless you're going to clean that thing out every single time and you can, you can wash out or clean it. But we just like to go that inexpensive route and say, okay, this is our grinder for all the things we're going to use, but you can grind that down, not into small egg shell pieces, not into, but into a very fine powder. And I'm talking, uh, talcum-like powder. That's what we do.

8:10We just grind it down over and over. It doesn't take long and that actually has a lot of benefits for the plants. But before we do that, let's talk about storing them. It has a lot of benefits for us because let's talk about the years past when we would collect these egg shells and we'd crush them by hand, put them in freezer bags and we would just fill our freezer over the winter, trying to save and have all this, all these egg shells. Right. So there's a better way to actually store your eggshells throughout the winter and getting ready for garden season. Yeah. So we're not, we're not quite ready to plant yet. No, we're not. We're still saving all of our eggshells and, and for that. So what we do is, you know, we'll, we'll save so many, a lot of people like to put their eggshells. We get all these questions. So I'm just going to cover them right now because I think it's important to talk about it. Um, do you have to dry them? Well, yeah, they're going to grind a whole lot better. We usually, we get a grinding process, what, every three or four weeks, we'll save our eggshells, we'll crush them by hand, put them in a freezer, lock bag, throw them in the freezer. And when we get enough, we'll take them out and we'll freeze them, or excuse me, not freeze them, we'll grind them up into that powder.

9:10You can, and a lot of people love doing this, put them on a cookie sheet, put them in your oven, I think 150 and dry them out. We've never really done that. It's not necessary. People say, well, can you get this? You know, their eggshells are not going to carry all the other things we talk about, but a lot of people like to heat them up to dry them and you, you certainly can. Right. It's a big concern to salvonella and, you know, you definitely, we get the questions. Should you rinse your eggshells before you store them or crush them? Sure. You're bridcing. It's not going to hurt them. I'm putting them into a powder or grinding them into a powder is going to help get rid of that access to salvonella. But again, you can, you can rinse them and then dry them and freeze them or you can put them in your oven. Salvones are about 180 to 200 degrees and you can dry them out before you grind them. But, you know, it's just the important thing is that we want them into powder before they go into your planting holes. Yeah. And then you freeze that and there's really little worry of anything. So once you get that powder and we save it up a lot. So now it really comes down to how are you going to use these to really benefit your plant?

10:14So, you know, think before when you would crush those eggshells up and you might put an egg shower too. And again, we talked about, it's not going to get to those plants this year. That's really not going to help the soil. But when you're taking a teaspoon or two of egg shell powder and you're putting it in that planting hole of a tomato or a marigold or a pepper plant, they are all going to almost within, you know, days absorb into that soil. The watering comes in and it starts to leech those nutrients right into your plants and really provides them the calcium boost they need. That calcium is going to last pretty much all growing season when you put it into the planting hole. Yeah. It is. And so how much should you use? I mean, this is the great question. So here's our rule of thumb and what we've been doing this for a while now with a lot of success. And so what's the old saying when something works, you know, don't break it, right? Right. Exactly. So for egg shell powder for our vegetable plants, tomatoes and peppers, cucumbers, zucchini, you name it. We put, I'd say, two to three tablespoons in every planting hole.

11:17Yeah. I think for the larger vegetable plants or the larger flowers, I think, you know, two to three tablespoons is more the plenty, smaller plants, pansies, you know, you can put a teaspoon. Oh, yeah. You can put a little bit in. You're absolutely right. And again, we talk about this a lot. Why is this called the simple garden life? Because sometimes people make gardening so difficult and so frustrating for themselves that it's not fun. And you have to make it fun. So for us, when we say two to three, we really mean that. It's not like if you put three tablespoons, your tomato plants are going to produce 6.8 pounds of tomatoes and two tablespoons are going to have some blossom rot. It's not the way it works. This helps your soil over time. But by grinding it helps your soil much more immediately in the same growing season and can help your plants just develop far better with far less health issues. And again, it's not just beyond the blossom rot. Calcium also plays a huge, huge role in that initial plant health for all of those annual plants we're talking about. Right.

12:18And it also helps with soil to absorb with your plants are having difficulty absorbing calcium because they are too wet. Yeah. Giving that calcium boost helps your plants tremendously. Yeah. And we talk about planting holes. That's where people really need to concentrate their efforts. So many people get compost and warm castings and all the great things that you really do need. And they spread them all over their garden and tell them in or they think it's going all over. Concentrate those things just like this egg powder right in your planting holes because that's where the roots of your plants are going to grow and they're going to take them that season. So when you know in our planting holes we put compost, we put coffee grounds, we put egg shells, we put warm castings. Those are all in the planting hole because they're helping that plant that year right where it needs it the most. Right. Right at the roots. But we also use the egg shell powder on top of our soil after we plant. And why is that? It's a great it's a great cause because what happens when it rains? Right. It's a slow release calcium boost to your plants. Yes. Every time it rains or you water that calcium is leaching down into that soil and helping out. And again, we might put a teaspoon around the top of each plant and if we have enough we

13:22sometimes you know it depends how many eggs I've had. You eat a lot of eggs for good. So so again, just take it like that. It just realized that when you use the powder versus bits and pieces, you're going to get a lot more now. I want to say something before we go, there still is a use for the bits and pieces and this is what we have talked about. We're like, wait a minute, wait a minute. You're saying grind, grind, grind. But if you have a lot of problems with slugs, broken egg shells around the rims of your plants, when I say the rims, you plan your top and you circle a little maybe three inches out and you crush up some egg shells around there, that can actually help prevent slug damage because what the slugs cannot crawl across that without getting cut. Which dries their skin out and they can't make it to your plant. So there still is a use for some crushed egg shells and yes, they'll break down eventually and help put some soil in there as well. But for the majority of the use of it, you want to use that ground powder. Right. And for those that don't eat eggs, there's some people that can eat eggs like me because

14:23I have an egg allergy or people that just don't choose to eat eggs. You can still utilize eggs in your eggshells in your garden. For many years, we would go to a local diner, breakfast diner and ask them to save their eggshells for us. And we would go there every Saturday with our five gallon bucket and switch it out and they would give us their eggshells from their breakfast and we would just replace it with a clean bucket. I'm pretty sure they gave us their eggshells, their potato peelings and coffee grounds. And all they're coffee grounds and all we had to do was take them a five gallon bucket every Saturday and we would go in for breakfast and they would hand us a full one. We would feel like we had won the lottery taking it home. We got a lot of strange looks though. Yeah, we did. But you know what? It was great because you were saving that from going to a landfill and it was really helping. That was until we got our own chickens and could start doing our things. But Mary's right, there's always a way to find these soil amendments that don't have to be so costly. You know, you can make your own compost. You can go out and find coffee grounds.

15:24You can go out and find eggshells even if you don't have them. But the important thing is, and what we hope you take home today as we wrap this up is that eggshells can be so beneficial to helping your soil and helping your plants. But it's best to always grind them down as much as possible and leave you with this this last thing. Yes, if you're asking and you're thinking, well, wait a minute, I put eggshells in my compost bin. Yeah, if you grind them up, they're going to break down that much faster and that calcium is going to leach into there as well. They're beneficial in all areas of gardening. All right. So I think we've wrapped up our second podcast of the season. We're really enjoying getting back into this and we hope you are too. Again, you can always email us at the farm at owgarden.com with your questions. We're always happy to answer. We try to get back with everybody within at least a day or two. We enjoy it and we get a lot of emails from it and you can follow us at simplegardenlife.com. Happy gardening, everyone.

16:26That's right. Happy gardening. We'll see you next time. We hope you've enjoyed this episode. Subscribe to the simple garden podcast on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or most of your favorite podcast apps. You can also head over to simplegardenlife.com where you can listen and read all of the show notes to every episode. And if you have any questions, any ideas for show topics or if you want to share your favorite garden tip, email us at the farm at owgarden.com. Until next time, thanks, everyone.