How to use egg shells

Convincing Reasons to Start Using Egg Shells In Your Garden

At HideAway Haven we use a lot of eggs when preparing delicious breakfasts for our guests. So what do we do with all the egg shells. Being environmentally aware we didn't want to just throw them away or put them all into the compost. 

Here are just some of our uses.

• We do have slugs and snails in our garden and we don't want to use chemicals to deter them. We sprinkle coarsely-crumbled baked eggshells (see note below why baked eggshells are safer) around the plants where the snails like to dine. The shells’ sharp edges deter snails and slugs by abrading the sensitive foot of any land mollusc that attempts to cross the barrier. Most snails and slugs quickly emigrate from our garden in search of easier pickings.

• The eggshells are also a great way for our birds to get extra calcium into their diets.

• While calcium is considered a secondary nutrient for plants, our garden certainly appreciates the added minerals, especially our tomatoes and peppers as these plants are the most easily affected by calcium-deficiency. We bake the eggshells and then grind them to a fine powder in the Thermomix.

Eggs are known carriers of salmonella, are not present in un-cracked eggs that have been well washed. If you want to store ground eggshells that are safe sterilize them in a 100°C oven for 30 minutes. You can then pulverize the dried eggshells using a mortar and pestle, Stored in an airtight container, crushed eggshells will probably last forever.

We keep our eggs shells and pop them in the oven when preheating for breakfast cooking.