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fertilizer Making my own fertilizer

Pepperjack91

Pepperjack91

So I saw a comment on someone's thread that talked about grinding up egg shells to give their plants calcium. I thought this was a fabulous idea and am currently working about 150 egg shells into a fine dust. I figured I could add Epsom salt to this and it would be a very useful mix. What else could I add to this to have a really useful and organic fertilizer??

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Gonna take a while..
 
No idea personally but very interesting. Would a blender work well for eggshells? I get lazy sometimes and couldn't see myself hand mashing eggshells to powder lol. 
 
well... you might have to wait until the spring when the weather warms so that they dont freeze in the mail... but you can go online (amazon.com for example) and find vendors for "red wrigglers"... those are the type you want... and you buy a plastic tub at walmart... shred newspapers, add dried leaves, kitchen scraps (vegetables, coffee grounds, egg shells... and fruits not containing citrus)... mulch, used potting soil, and all sorts of other yard waste... hydrate the worm food to field capacity (where water onyl drains from a handful in a small stream when squeezed.)  Add the worms and let them get to work...  That is a simple explanation but there is plenty of literature out there... its literally as simple as acquiring, containing, and feeding the worms.  Too simple to be true... but it is!!!  I have 6 x 35 gallon worm farms all spawned from the same original worms I acquired 4 years ago.  You can keep them inside the house and the dont smell at all... that is unless you pick up a handfull and inhale deeply... in that case you will be met with a scent not unlike that of a cool mist precolating from beneath the deep, black topsoil of a sublimely beautiful primordial forrest of enchantment.
 
If you are going to use egg shells as is, use a worm farm.  Egg shells take a very long time to break down into plant usable stuff.  Worms will gobble that stuff up and give you better stuff!
 
You can also roast those crushed shells to burn off the organic matter (the film inside the shell), and toss them into a jar of vinegar to create water soluble calcium phosphate.  Then dilute it and water your plants with it.  Much faster than burying them as is.  Once it stops fizzing, the vinegar has effectively been neutralized.

Noah Yates said:
unless you pick up a handfull and inhale deeply... in that case you will be met with a scent not unlike that of a cool mist precolating from beneath the deep, black topsoil of a sublimely beautiful primordial forrest of enchantment.
Click to expand...
 
That was beautiful.
 
Worm farm sounds like the way to go. Might have to set one or two of those up.
 
We can grow all kinds of stuff in our mix of dirt and horse manure, but we have a boarding facility, so we're never in short supply  :rofl:
 
     Another option (particularly attractive to a shiftless, lazy gardener like myself) is to just compost everything. I understand the desire for a faster acting calcium fertilizer that could be applied as needed. But if all the ingredients (shells, peels, grounds…) are going to be returned to the soil anyway, why not just let nature (via hot compost) just do its thing? 
     You get all the benefit of having your nutrient-rich raw materials decomposed to a plant-friendly state, plus, if you add all your lawn and garden waste, you get an end product that will improve soil texture as well as fertility. I'm not knocking worm-farming as an option (I'd like to start one someday), this is just another way to achieve
 
Noah Yates said:
deep, black topsoil of a sublimely beautiful primordial forrest of enchantment.
Click to expand...
 (I love that!)
 
I typically buy a few bags of compost from a local mulch company. I guess I'm just doing this for an added boost to the plants. If I put the egg shells in like they are now, will that give them calcium further into the season since they take a long time to degrade?
 
dash 2 said:
Another option (particularly attractive to a shiftless, lazy gardener like myself) is to just compost everything. I understand the desire for a faster acting calcium fertilizer that could be applied as needed. But if all the ingredients (shells, peels, grounds) are going to be returned to the soil anyway, why not just let nature (via hot compost) just do its thing? 
     You get all the benefit of having your nutrient-rich raw materials decomposed to a plant-friendly state, plus, if you add all your lawn and garden waste, you get an end product that will improve soil texture as well as fertility. I'm not knocking worm-farming as an option (I'd like to start one someday), this is just another way to achieve
 

 
Click to expand...
I agree! In fact my compost mixed with peat moss and perlite is my growing medium since I grow exclusively in containers. Then I make compost tea weekly from the compost bin with a little worm castings mixed in and that is all the fertilizer I use for the most part. Occasionally I will give the plants a little Earth Juice Bloom for some added nutrients as well.
 
Wouldn't the coffee grounds make the soil too acidic?  I thought the pepper plants don't like acidity.


I think most of the acidity is gone in used grounds.
 
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