Worms like them, tomatoes love them and snails don’t. Crushed eggshells are the cure-all for the organic (or nearly so) gardener, but what a mess crushing them.
The pictures explain the process, but a few notes before you run for your recycling bin to get started:
1. Eggshells should be dry.
2. Boiling them first solves the following issues: attracting flies while they dry, being sticky after drying and attracting pets and rodents once out in the garden. That said, you don’t have to boil them, I didn’t until recently. (Water your plants with the water used to boil the shells, it adds calcium to the soil.)
3. Whether you use an old magazine, catalog or newspaper, eggshells are sharp enough to cut through paper so put them between quite a few layers of paper before you crush.
4. If making a mess isn’t actually an issue for you, this is a great task for kids with your supervision.
Have fun crushing your eggshells – without the mess.
Good idea about using the water you boil the eggshells in! I usually let my shells dry at the bottom of my oven and then put them in a paper bag, which I stand on until they are crushed.
I love it! That must feel so satisfying to crunch them under your feet. Somehow paper bags are precious around out house, we never have many, but paper catalogs, newspapers and magazines come out our ears.
We have a surfeit of brown paper bags due to buying more of our vegetables at the local organic farm. They might as well get a second use before they go in the compost!
It is definitely a very satisfying feeling stomping on the eggshells – good fun for all the family :)
I love it!