Eggshells As An Alternative To Limestone For Acidic Soils
December 20, 2022
Nitrogen, potassium, and calcium are essential nutrients necessary for all plants’ overall growth. Eggshells are rich in calcium and can be used regularly to introduce this essential mineral to garden soil. Use crushed eggshells in your garden and reap many of their benefits.
Eggshells contain nutrients such as calcium, potassium, phosphorus, and zinc. The average composition is 95% calcium carbonate, 0.3% phosphorus and magnesium, and small quantities of zinc, sodium, potassium, manganese, and iron.
Eggshells are a fantastic replacement for agricultural lime. Using crushed eggshells in your garden helps reduce soil acidity which is exactly what lime does. The nutrient levels might be low in eggshells but otherwise treated as waste, they are wonderful organic fertilizers and soil acidity neutralizers. It would be a shame to throw away these nutrients, right? There are so many millions of eggshells taking up space in landfills all over the world.
Aside from reducing the acidity in soils, eggshells can also help loosen and aerate garden soil. There are also many other benefits to adding eggshells to your soil garden such as: acting as a protective layering of mulch to your plants, controlling pests such as slugs and snails because they hate the smell of albumin, attracting birds that can act as pollinators and your natural fight against insect pests, and add more nutrients to your plants as it contains amounts of calcium, potassium, phosphorus, and zinc.
