Learning and exploring a new world is certainly exciting. In the past, when I just graduated from college, I couldn't cook because I didn't have the opportunity to cook at home. But since I moved to the capital and had to be independent at that time, I started to like cooking.
Then at the beginning of this year, I started to like gardening and learned everything from the beginning. Youtube is my teacher. I am very grateful, I am blessed with the ability to learn quickly. When it comes to recipes, I can successfully see new recipes, so with gardening, I am very grateful to be able to successfully plant even though I am still a beginner gardener.
I continue to learn, never stop improvising many things in my garden. From the beginning, I chose to garden organically. So, I started learning how to use the materials around me to fertilize my planting media.
Starting from compost, manure, also, eggshells. Compost and eggshells are very useful for reducing waste from my kitchen, especially from the cooking process that I do every day.
Eggs are a source of protein that my family consumes almost every day. So, I was very excited to collect lots of egg shells. Before getting to know gardening, especially organic gardens, I always threw away the egg shells.
But now everything has changed. I collected a lot of egg shells from my kitchen, and even from my mother-in-law's kitchen.
Processing Egg Shells Into Powder
In fact, egg shells are a good source of protein for plant growth, especially in the vegetative phase. Egg shells help strengthen the leaves and stems, of course this is very useful, especially in the early stages of the plant so that the plant does not break easily.
Apart from that, the contents of egg shells also help protect against plant root rot because they are anti-microbial.
But unfortunately, egg shells will take a long time to be absorbed by the planting medium if they are not processed. So, usually I process egg shells into powder.
First, I wash them straight away then dry them. After the egg shells became dry, then I stored the dried egg shells. Waiting for inventory to become larger before further processing.
After I feel that the supply of dry eggshells is sufficient, usually one basket, then I will blend the eggshells into powder form.
For maximum results, I filter the results of the eggshell blender to get fine eggshell powder. The finer the texture of the eggshell powder, the easier it will be for their nutrients to be absorbed by the planting medium.
From one basket of dry eggshells, I can get almost one jar which is enough for one fertilization.
How to Use Eggshell Powder
The plants that I usually give eggshell powder fertilizer to are chilies, cauliflower, cucumbers, tomatoes, and eggplants.
This time, I will fertilize my tomato plants which are two weeks old after being transplanted.
I sprinkle enough eggshell powder onto the tomato planting medium. But it doesn't stop here, because I will cover them with planting medium again.
For the planting medium that covers the top of the plant after being fertilized using eggshell powder, I use a mixture of soil, manure, and burnt rice husks, with a mixture of 2:1:1, with two portions for soil.
So, I cover the eggshell powder of course so that the absorption of nutrients by the plant occurs faster. Organic fertilizer from eggshell fertilizer is also very good as organic fertilizer during the rainy season and it really saves money.
I have also made a video on how to make organic fertilizer from eggshells some time ago, and you can see it on my Youtube Channel. You can click CC (subtitles) for several language options available.
I am very happy that eggshell powder can work well and powerfully in my garden. I have also posted some of the results on Hive. Happy gardening!
Best Regards,
Anggrek Lestari
Anggrek Lestari is an Indonesian fiction writer who has published two major books. Now She is a full-time content creator. She has a goal to share life, poem, and food content that makes others happy and can get inspiration.
Contact Person: authoranggreklestari@gmail.com
Discord: anggreklestari#3009