Using Egg Shells in the Vegetable Garden

G'day, welcome to iCultivate. My name's Steve and today we're going to be looking at a couple of uses of eggshells in the vegetable garden. While calcium is not considered to be one of the major plant nutrients, a calcium deficiency can lead to necrotic or rotting plant sections and stunted growth. Now it is important to realize that a calcium deficiency might occur not because of there not being enough calcium in the soil, but in fact because the plant is not able to absorb that calcium. Now the reason for that may be because of things like the soil being too acidic or perhaps not enough moisture in the soil. Now I'll address ways of correcting those things in another video about soils, but in this video we're going to be looking at how eggshells can be used in order to keep calcium levels in the soil at a good level. Once you've used your eggs in your cooking, you can use the leftover eggshells in a number of ways. First of all, the whole eggshells themselves, just crush them up a little bit and then just add them to your compost. When you dig over the compost, those eggshells will be a part of the compost and be a slow-release calcium mixture within it. The other thing you can do with your eggshells is to dry them out first and then crush them either by hand or in a blender to form small little shards of eggshells that you can use directly in your garden. Let's have a look at that now. Also consider using eggshells as a slow-release calcium mixture. When you are preparing a new area of garden bed and you're digging in new compost and various fertilizers, also add a few handfuls of eggshells. These will act as a slow-release calcium mixture and help to ensure that there is enough calcium in the soil for the plant's needs. Dig this in with the compost and other materials that you've added to the soil and with those other materials in the soil, it will now be ready for you to plant. Another use of eggshells is as a deterrent against slugs and snails. All you need to do is to take a handful of these eggshells and sprinkle them around the area where slugs and snails are most prevalent. They don't like crawling over the sharp edges of the eggshells and so therefore it is a very effective deterrent to those pests. I hope you've enjoyed this video. Can I ask you to please go down to the thumbs up and give us a thumbs up, subscribe to this channel and go to our website icultivate.net and become a member of the community. Thanks for watching.