Simple Plant Food at AT:NY

Over the weekend at AT:NY, our plant therapist, Matt, shared a tip for using discarded eggshells as plant food. For those of us who can't easily compost, this is a great read...

The process is easy: You dry the shells in the oven and pulverize them in a food processor. Sprinkle the resulting powder around the base of your plants, and they get a healthy dose of calcium.

There is also a tip on feeding your plants with coffee grounds. And read the comments — helpful AT gardeners added lots of good ideas.

Here's the original post:
PlantTherapy: Simple Plant Food, for Free

(Image: Kate Shepard via Flickr)

Comments (3)

Food processor... duh! I had mashed up egg shells with coffee grounds using a spoon before and it looked fairly ineffective sitting there on top of the soil. This makes much more sense. Thanks :)

posted by Rivercat0338 on April 15th 2008 at 8:29am
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Dried coffee grounds can be effective on the top of soil as can egg shells but your best bet is to mix them into the soil before you put in seeds or plants.

posted by http://badhuman.wordpress.com on April 15th 2008 at 11:51am
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You have to be careful about what you add to your plants. I know that coffee grounds, for example, add acidity to your soil. That could be harmful to plants that want a more neutral soil. I'm not sure whether the same is true for eggshells or not.

posted by sarahbest on April 18th 2008 at 5:51am
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