Saturday, February 3, 2018

Edna's Eggshells a.k.a One Man's Trash Is Another Man's Treasure

It started with a post in my local Buy Nothing group to give away some egg cartons. T and I eat a whole lot of eggs and I've seen a bunch of ideas for reusing the cartons: from seed starters to craft projects to just giving them to people with chickens to collect their own eggs.

Well, I didn't get an immediate taker for the cartons, but I did get a woman asking me if she could have the shells. An odd request?



Not so much. It turns out that eggshells are a great supplement for your plants. You can grind them up and put them directly into the soil, in your compost, or soak them in your watering can. For potted plants, you can replace any gravel in the bottom of the pot with chunks of egg shell. The eggshells are a great source of calcium and act as a natural fertilizer. For some fruiting plants like tomatoes, it can prevent blossom end rot on the fruit, caused by calcium deficiency.

After a bad experience with some neighbors with an unofficial food scrap pile that led to a rat infestation, T and I have been really nervous about doing our own compost and risking pests. I end up putting a fair amount of my veggie scraps in our yard waste container, but totally have the egg shells up for grabs.

And so, my neighbor Edna and I decided we were a match made on the interwebs. I'll collect the shells in a rescued takeout container and save them in my freezer to prevent any possible pests or odor. Every couple weeks, I'll leave a bag of shells for her on my porch. I'm looking for ways to reduce waste, she wants free fertilizer - win/win.





Cost: FREE

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