Eggshell Gardening

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PLANT A SHELL

Save your eggshells from breakfast! You can use them for planting a garden. A family-friendly project you can do in the early Spring, is to plant your leftover eggshells with seeds. This gives the seeds an opportunity to grow safe from critters and with personal watering attention in their own container before planting in a garden or larger pot.

Things you will need:

• seeds (small herbs or flowers are easy to begin your project)

• eggshells (cleaned)

• pebbles

• potting soil

• Optional - food coloring of your choice

  1. Start your project by gathering your clean eggshells. If you would like to have colored eggs, you can dye them first with a few drops of food coloring in water for 5 minutes.

  2. Next, gather your seeds of choice. You can find seeds at a garden store, a grocery store, or online. Any variety will work. Some nice choices are herbs or small flowers.

  3. You can now place a pebble or two in the bottom of the shell to allow space for water to drain. *If you would like to try, you could poke a small hole in the bottom of the shell to allow for drainage, but it is not necessary if you do not over-water the plant.

  4. Now sprinkle about a half an inch of soil on the pebbles.

  5. Place a few seeds on the soil. The seed packet will describe how deep and how far apart to plant the seeds.

  6. Cover the seeds with soil.

  7. Spray the soil with water and place the finished shell in a sunny spot. Again, the seed packet will tell you what amount of sun this plant will require.

  8. A note about watering- A good way to tell if the plant needs to be watered, is to pick up the shell and see how light it is. If it feels light, water it:)

  9. The seeds will take root and sprout within a few weeks. When the plant has outgrown it’s container, you can plant the ENTIRE plant (shell and all) into a larger pot or directly into your garden. The shell contains calcium and can help fortify the soil in your garden.

Emily BeckerComment