When it comes time to work hard on the summer cottage, it is also about fertilizing. Immediately you can recognize only beginners to join the gardening industry and experienced "professors" in this matter. Beginners are frantically flipping through the Internet and rushing to specialty stores. Experienced only shrug their shoulders and condescendingly admonish them: "Why do you constantly buy something new? Better not throw away what you already have!".
In fact, the same egg shell reviews invariably receive praise from gardeners and gardeners who applied it as fertilizer. The material is really accessible, you can say, a regular in our bins. But what is the secret of his popularity and is he so good?
Frankly speaking,
eggshell as a fertilizer can not be compared with the usual nitrogen, phosphorus and potash, which have all the vital elements for plant nutrition. Almost completely (up to 95%), the eggshell is calcium, more precisely, calcium carbonate; the remainder is
magnesium carbonate, phosphates and organic matter.
But it is calcium that produces such a positive effect as deoxidation of the soil. If it is too acidic, its fertility decreases, the plants on it develop much worse and give a poor harvest. In this case, the soil is usually neutralized with lime or chalk. They say that the eggshell as a fertilizer is valuable not only for its microelement component, but also for a different crystalline structure that facilitates its absorption.
Gardeners and gardeners not only bring shells crushed into powder into the soil, but they also water it with five-day infusion seedlings. Great benefit is achieved if the crushed eggshell is
applied to the soil along with
mineral fertilizers. Most of them increase the
acidity of the soil, and
egg shell
powder neutralizes this effect.
However, eggshell as a fertilizer does not decompose as quickly as enthusiasts attribute to it. When you make it, firstly, you need to know the measure, and secondly, you need to put it only under adult plants. But garden crops that lack micronutrients will gratefully respond to such top dressing.
In Soviet times, when even an ordinary pot for seedlings, which was in great demand, turned into a shortage, inventive people came up with growing seedlings in egg shells. An appropriate prepared shell was filled with soil, a seed planted there and watered. In modern times, when eggs began to be sold in transparent plastic cassettes, they were also adapted for mini-greenhouses. Again, emphasis was placed on environmentally friendly, unlike plastic pots, material that excludes transplanting the plant into the soil. Enough before the seedlings in the egg shell go to a permanent place, slightly squeeze the shell to crack, and the root system of the plant itself will complete the destruction.
Experienced gardeners, however, immediately indicated that a minimum of soil is contained in such "pots", and therefore the plant will have to be watered more often. And the root system has nowhere to turn around. After planting in the ground, the plant will spend energy on its development, and after all, they could be used for the aboveground part.
Is an egg shell a fertilizer? Rather yes than no. But she cannot replace any of the existing mineral or organic fertilizers.