Since we get about 18-20 eggs a week from our 3 hens, there was something I had been wanting to try for quite some time. Did you know you can start seedlings in egg shells! Once they've sprouted, you just lightly crush the shell and plant the whole thing in the ground. the shells add calcium to the soil. It's not too difficult to do, but I want to share a few tricks and tips that I learned from my experience.
The tools you need are a serrated knife, and a straight pin. You will also need an old egg carton. I found the Styrofoam one to be especially helpful because it won't rot or smell when it gets wet, and it is reusable.
First, begin by very carefully and lightly dragging the serrated knife blade back across the egg shell. do not apply much pressure or you will crush the egg. you want to find what looks like the narrowest end of the egg and cut about 1/3 or maybe slightly less of the egg shell. off. Continue to lightly pull towards you until you cut the top of the shell off.
After dumping the contents, rinse the egg shell. It doesn't have to be very thorough but you don't want the outside to be slippery when your inserting the pin and you don't want egg residual inside the shell. Next, take your pin and gently begin pressing it into the bottom of the shell. This will be the drainage hole in the bottom of the seedling container. Once the pin is all the way through, slowly twist it and make the hole larger. It really needs to be a decent sized hole so water can drain out. About the size of a pea.
You will also want to poke a hole or two in each of the pockets of the egg carton that will hold your seedling containers and seedlings. This also is for drainage. (I didn't show that step in this photo yet)
Once you've done that with a few eggs, fill the shells with a light soil mixture. I used those expanding soil wafers. They are the ones that are used in the small plastic 6 packs starters. It's not necessary, but it's what I had so i went with them. it's actually a little too much soil for the egg shells, so some of the soil came out after the wafers expanded all the way. In this 6 pack batch of seedlings, I added about 3 bean seeds to each eggshell.
The seeds germinated nicely and I replanted the seedlings as the individually matured to the same level as the largest ones seen in the photos. Before I replanted the seedlings, I crushed the egg shell in the palm of my hand to allow the roots to begin to spread out. The seedlings showed no major signs of transplant shock and are still providing us with beans. This is a fun way to share gardening with your kids. My daughters really enjoyed doing this as an activity and especially liked that we used the eggshells from the chickens that they love so much.
