Fertilizing with Bone Meal

What are you growing this year? All of your plants, and particularly potatoes, onions, garlic, and flower bulbs, will appreciate a feeding of the bone meal! Bone meal is strictly what it sounds like pulverized bones. These usually are from cattle, as a byproduct of meat production. an alternate type is fishbone meal. Both sorts of bone meal provide equivalent benefits to your soil.

How Is Bone Meal Made

To make the bone meal, the leftover bones (which have had all their meat cuts removed) are cleaned by boiling or steaming. Then they’re dried and ground into a powder. The powder is sold as is, or could also be pelletized or liquefied first.

What Does Bone Meal Give to the Garden?

The primary advantage of using bone meal in your garden is to supply your plants with a superb source of phosphorus.

Bone meal contains 12 to 16% of phosphorus.

The phosphorus in bone meal is during a form that’s especially easy for plants to use.

It is also an honest source of calcium, which is a crucial nutrient for strong plant growth.

Some bone meals contain nitrogen also, but never during a significant amount.

What to try to Before Adding Bone Meal

Before applying bone meal to your garden, have your soil tested. The bone meal may be a good selection if your soil is low in phosphorus because unlike slow-acting Soft Rock Phosphate, it’ll provide a fast source for deficient soils. What to try to if My Soil pH is above 7? If your soil pH is above 7, the phosphorus will become bound up within the soil and not be available for your plants. If your test results show alkaline soil (above pH 7), bring the pH down first by adding Cottonseed Meal, Peat Moss, Soil Sulfur, or Acid-Loving fertilizers. What if my Soil is sweet in Calcium or Phosphorus? If your soil test indicates that you simply have sufficient calcium or phosphorus but not the opposite, you would possibly instead consider a more targeted solution like high-phosphorus guano, or shell Flour for calcium.

Tips in Adding Bone Meal to Your Soil

When applying bone meal to your garden, make certain to combine it into the soil and not just top-dress it. The scent of bone meal can attract scavenging wildlife like raccoons, coyotes, and feral dogs, which can wreak havoc in your garden beds as they appear for the source of the odor.

Store away your fertilizer–wildlife and your own pets which will think it smells sort of a tasty snack. Although the bone meal isn’t toxic, it can cause life-threatening impactions within the gut if your pets get into the bag.

To use bone meal, apply 5 to 10 pounds per 100 square feet, or 1 to 2 Tablespoons per planting hole for bulbs and transplants.

You can also mix it into potting soil at 1/2 cup per cu ft.

To apply to trees, use 1 pound per 2-inches of trunk diameter, and spread it evenly from the trunk to the drip line.

Bone meal is especially good for helping your flowers bloom and garlic and onions grow big, but all of your garden plants will appreciate the phosphorus and calcium it provides. Feed your plants the simplest, and grow organic for life!