What every gardener needs to know about egg shells

Last Updated on June 20, 2024 by Michelle

Eggshells are loaded with calcium, which is a key ingredient in good soil.

So if you’re looking for a great way to improve garden soil, stop throwing away your egg shells! Seriously.

If you’d like to see how I make the easiest-ever compost tea, be sure to catch my instructional video below.

And if you’re looking for the best germinating seeds I’ve ever experienced, combined with an amazingly organized website that will help you find exactly what you want, even if you don’t know what you want (seriously), I highly recommend TrueLeaf market for the best seeds I’ve ever ordered online. And I’ve tried a lot.

Plant some egg shells

Among the many benefits they offer your garden, egg shells are said to help prevent blossom-end rot in tomatoes.

You see blossom-end rot on tomatoes when they’re not getting enough calcium. Often over watering compounds the problem because if a tomato plant gets too much water it can’t absorb the calcium it needs.

So we monitor our watering and we like to add a few tablespoons of dried, crushed eggshells to our soil right before transplanting our tomato seedlings. We also sometimes work them in the soil around the tomatoes. While we crush them up before we work them in, you really don’t have to be too particular about it. Keep it simple. There are enough complicated things in your day. Boosting your garden soil’s calcium and mineral content doesn’t need to be one of them.

Our garden is looking great this summer, and I’m sure our egg shells have a lot to do with its success, especially the success of our tomatoes. Well, I’m sure a little composted cow manure doesn’t hurt either.

Of course Scout would love to have her run of the garden. Thankfully our fencing keeps her at bay.

This post contains affiliate links. Go here to read the full (ultra fun) legal disclosure about that.

Count the cost

Seriously. Using egg shells in your garden will not only cost you zero dimes, but it’s possibly the easiest thing you’ll ever do to improve your soil.

Of course you don’t have to literally crush your shells and work them into your soil. You can get eggshells in your garden in other ways too. Read on for my favorite way.

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By the way, I’m gonna interrupt this post with a little public announcement. I just recently stumbled upon this amazing site–Nature Hills Nursery is the largest online nursery. Ever. Seriously.

And these folks treat their plants right. Not to mention their customers. If you’re looking for a huge variety of plants, shrubs, and trees this is it. They even have many rare plants that are rather hard to find these days. And they never spray their plants with hormones to make them bloom, like so many stores and nurseries do right before putting them on the shelves, ya know, just in time for you to cart them home, covered in chemicals. When you purchase a plant or tree from NatureHills.com you’re purchasing a plant that has been grown and tended to with care and is shipped to you right from the field. How awesome is that?

Yes, by the way, Nature Hills Nursery asked me to partner with them cause they wanna meet my readers, meaning my links here are affiliate links and if you do decide you’d like to order from them they send me a tiny percentage. But it doesn’t cost you a penny extra. And I truly love this company and their beautiful plants, so I am elated to introduce you to them.

Take the easy way out

The most common way I add egg shells to my garden? I choose the easy-as-pie way.

But let’s just pause for a second and contemplate why “easy as pie” is even a saying. I’m sorry. I’ve made lots of baked goods in my day. (Mostly ones made with maple these days. Mmmmmm… Like the Maple Blueberry Pie recipe I share in Sweet Maple.) And pie is definitely not the easiest. Yummy. But not easy. Just sayin… If you’d like a little help with your pie crust, I share my Grandma’s Perfect Crust recipe right here.

But back to my egg shells. . . Whenever I’m baking or mixing up some eggs for breakfast, I toss my shells in a small compost pail that I keep on the counter. Well, it’s not really a compost pail, per se, but it’s an old (really old) aluminum canister I snagged on a lucky trip to the dump. We have an amazing Give-And-Take room at our town dump (ingenious, no?), and someone else didn’t see this old aluminum canister labeled “sugar” as quite the treasure that I do, I guess. I often muse over the irony that it’s labeled sugar and houses some smelly, rotting banana rinds, old coffee grounds, and slimy egg shells instead of anything remotely “refined” like sugar.

Of course, in the end, it’s kinda sugar for my garden.

So that’s it. When my canister is full (or starts smelling not-so-good), I take a walk down to the compost pile and toss the contents on my compost bin. That’s it. Piece of cake.

Wait. . . there’s another kitchen metaphor that’s not so easy either. I mean from-scratch cake is heavenly (and gives me lots more egg shells for my garden), but I wouldn’t call that too easy either.

Of course you may not have an amazing little tucked-away corner on your kitchen counter like I do.

I’ll admit here that I love the fact that my kitchen layout offers me a treasured little counter “nook,” beside the fridge, that literally no one ever sees. Unless they wanna toast something or pull out our air popper. So I make sure to always do the toasting and the popcorn popping when we have company over.

Cause those things really are as easy as pie.

If you need to be a little more concerned that your compost bin looks nice, there are plenty out there to purchase–I love the simple, classy look of this one–and, bonus, it includes a handy charcoal filter that keeps the odor at bay too.

Feed the worms

I have neighbors who vermicompost and they say their worms love eggshells too. So whether you have a typical compost pile, a compost bin (this is a classy white one I also really like), or a vermicomposter (this is the coolest vermicomposter I’ve ever seen, if you want to own cool worms that is), your worms will be happy with an egg shell dessert now and then. And of course happy worms equal a happy garden.

I have always loved any product I purchase from Lehmans, and they have some great composting options. Click any picture to see what I mean. (These are affiliate links.)

Give your plants a little compost drink

In addition to egg shells, and coffee grounds (read more about coffee grounds in the garden here), I often add some compost tea to my garden (and house plants!) Check out this live instructional video from my facebook page for more information on that.

Some other gardening tips you’ll love:

Using coffee grounds in the garden.

Reasons you may want to NOT compost.

How to make your own garden trellis for FREE.

10 simple planters for succulents.

And check out the virtual seed rack at my favorite online source for amazing seeds right here.

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The LORD will guide you always; he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land and will strengthen your frame. You will be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail. Isaiah 58:11

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