do eggshells help the garden?

[GunsMadeAmericaFree]

I've been tossing eggshells out into my garden over the past year or so. We just planted strawberries in the area. I'm wondering if it is worth continuing to do this? Our soil has limestone underneath it, and is slightly alkaline.

 

[dphantom]

powdered it is a decent source of calcium and can raise soil Ph if needed.

 

[Scarpozzi]

Calcium is really good for the soil... It's why they sell bone meal.

I recommend throwing eggshells in compost so they break down. They also help aerate the soil until they do break down.

This forum post suggests that eggshells don't make soil any more alkaline: https://forums.botanicalgarden.ubc.ca/threads/what-is-the-ph-of-eggshells.56755/#:~:text=There is no pH for eggshells or any,acidity but will not make your soil alkaline.

My experience with soil is that more often than not, you can look at the soil and if it's red dirt or clay, most any nutrients can't hurt. Compost, grass clippings, fine-ground mulch, egg shells....anything can help make the soil richer if it holds water and allows more oxygen to get into the soil.

 

[GunsMadeAmericaFree]

I guess I've mostly been thinking that it would increase available calcium for the plants...

 

[lxskllr]

I put them in my compost. I try to keep all organics on my property. I figure if nothing else, it's one less thing to go to the landfill, and I can't think of anything that's harmful, so might as well.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

Anything plant, bone, and eggshell, do rather well in the garden (generally composted). Most meat and dairy products aside from eggshell probably don't need to be there.

 

[mindless1]

Yes, I've been using eggshells almost exclusively to improve calcium in container gardening soil I've reused for years, along with other compost added.

I toss them in a coffee can, then once it gets full I crush them down with a piece of 2x4 wood, then fill and crush again till I have a full container. They don't necessarily need to be fully powdered, I just aim for about BB sized pieces.

They break down slowly, very slowly in alkaline soil so I would consider trying to make the soil slightly acidic. Egg shells do slightly reduce acidity of soil, but bacterial action in the rest of the compost can raise it again given the right compost mix. To clarify the shells don't really need composted, just mixed into soil or even scattered on top if your rain is slightly acidic (won't work as well with alkaline tapwater).

Another alternative is convert the shells to a readily absorbed calcium acetate salt by dissolving them in vinegar but be careful, not too much for the plant at once and only use enough vinegar to dissolve the egg shells... a pH tester can come in handy.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

I haven't done eggshells, but all my coffee grounds go around the blueberry plants. I put a bunch of saw dust in too.

 

[mindless1]

^ Might seem like shades of gray but it does not make soil more alkaline, I mean a shift in that direction if the soil is acidic yes but never getting there. Instead it neutralizes acid by reacting with it to form a salt, so it would never go to a higher pH than neutral ~7ish no matter how much you used, but if you have acid loving plants you could still use too much.

 

[SaltyNuts]

Eggshells = calcium, yo.

 

[Gardener]

I let the city compost mine (clean green), however there is nothing wrong about composting them, although they do take a year+ to break down. Egg shells and those little plastic banana/ citrus fruit peal stickers, the hallmarks of the family compost bin. You have to eat a lot of eggs to equal a 40lb bag of dolomite lime.

 

[mindless1]

^ I don't worry about the time to break down. I look at it as being a season to season process. As soon as the weather turns from winter to spring, I sprinkle some all over the ground beds and pots of soil I'll use that season.

Next when it comes time to seed that soil or transplant seedlings from other containers, while tilling the soil to add more/other composted materials in, I sprinkle more crushed eggshells into that.

What doesn't dissolve right away is not a problem because there are still remnants left from last year.

I also do this with some of my other compost, remove the top half of container soil very early in spring, add virgin compost, put top 1/2 of soil back on top, and just make sure it stays slightly damp for the next couple months till it's time to put plants in the containers. You just have to make sure the soil doesn't hold too much water so the decomp process stays aerobic.

There are also ways to think outside the box. For example, once I had some leftover scraps of drywall. That's calcium sulfate aka gypsum. I bashed it to bits with a hammer and into the soil it went - in moderation.

 

[killster1]

my hippie gf always told me to stay away from anything alive for your compost pile. I recently started a compost pile since i have been doing alot of wood chipping and it seems wasteful to throw the wood chips in the trash (the reason i bought the chipper was because i couldn't fit the tree's in the trash cans heh but now i dont even use teh trash cans since chip it all down)

 

[mindless1]

^ Did she ever define "alive"? Generally that's supposed to mean meat, don't put meat in. Don't put the egg in, just the shells. About 10 minutes ago I put some radish leaves in my compost, which were "alive".

 

[killster1]

^ Did she ever define "alive"? Generally that's supposed to mean meat, don't put meat in. Don't put the egg in, just the shells. About 10 minutes ago I put some radish leaves in my compost, which were "alive".

What should you not put in a compost pile?
you think radish leaves are alive?

7 Things You Shouldn't Compost

• MEAT & MILK PRODUCTS. While meat and dairy products are perfectly biodegradable, they can attract unwanted pests to your backyard or green bin. ...
• BAKED GOODS. ...
• TREATED SAWDUST. ...
• HIGHLY ACIDIC FOODS. ...
• OILS & GREASY FOOD. ...
• PET & HUMAN WASTE. ...
• WEEDS.

i guess onions and citrus peals are bad as well.

 

[mindless1]

^ Sure, plants can be considered alive or dead, and the radishes were still alive when bought from the store, slowly dying but were "alive", and I could have even planted them in the ground if I'd wanted a certain % to survive and go to seed.

I have a shorter term and longer term compost, the longer gets citrus peels, pineapple rinds, banana peels, acorns, tree & shrub twigs and cuttings, etc, anything that takes more than a few months to break down. Shorter term gets non-woody weeds, leaves from the prior vegetable garden, plant based kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, tea leaves, and onion scraps as well.

I compost everything plant based, and don't notice the acidic foods causing excessively low pH, but it may be due to a couple factors, one being the egg shells (eventually, see below) and other materials neutralize acid, and the other being that the majority of water my garden receives comes from tap water which is slightly alkaline, and somewhat hard so those minerals counteract acidity too, and that acidity makes them bioavailable by conversion into a salt, for example fruit, citric acid + eggshell = calcium citrate.

Egg shells on the other hand, get thrown into a coffee can, crushed with a piece of 2x4 when the can gets full, then put into another container. I don't try to make them break down before mixed into the container or garden plot soil, but I mix into the soil months before plants go in.

 

[BonzaiDuck]

^ Sure, plants can be considered alive or dead, and the radishes were still alive when bought from the store, slowly dying but were "alive", and I could have even planted them in the ground if I'd wanted a certain % to survive and go to seed.

I have a shorter term and longer term compost, the longer gets citrus peels, pineapple rinds, banana peels, acorns, tree & shrub twigs and cuttings, etc, anything that takes more than a few months to break down. Shorter term gets non-woody weeds, leaves from the prior vegetable garden, plant based kitchen scraps, coffee grounds, tea leaves, and onion scraps as well.

I compost everything plant based, and don't notice the acidic foods causing excessively low pH, but it may be due to a couple factors, one being the egg shells (eventually, see below) and other materials neutralize acid, and the other being that the majority of water my garden receives comes from tap water which is slightly alkaline, and somewhat hard so those minerals counteract acidity too, and that acidity makes them bioavailable by conversion into a salt, for example citric acid + eggshell = calcium citrate.

Egg shells on the other hand, get thrown into a coffee can, crushed with a piece of 2x4 when the can gets full, then put into another container. I don't try to make them break down before mixed into the container or garden plot soil, but I mix into the soil months before plants go in.

I can refine my own vermi-composting practice a bit from your remarks. Eggshell should be pulverized, certainly. Certainly, the worms must wait until the citrus peels have turned to brown mush. I noticed last night what I'm supposed to know -- composting waste creates heat, and the worms migrate away from the heat. I probably introduced my rotting citrus to the worm-composting bin too early, but it wasn't a lot. The worms will just take refuge in the lower part of the bin.

We were buying 25-lb bags of Navels for juice, and generating a lot of citrus peel a few years back. Once it's properly rotted to worm-satisfaction, they go wild in the stuff. Some of my compost looked like red spaghetti there were so many worms proliferating.