If you have a garden, you know how important it is to fertilize the plants so that they can grow. Vegetables need some essential nutrients to thrive: nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus. They also need trace elements such as calcium, iron, and magnesium.
Gardeners know that the foundation of healthy plants to achieve incredible yields is soil compost. People living at sea have long known about the benefits of using shellfish. The fertilizer brings nutrients into the soil. What is shell fertilizer? Learn more about shell fertilizers.
What is Shellfish?
Shellfish manure is made from crushed bones, crabs, or other shellfish. It is an excellent source of phosphorus and calcium for many trace elements. One of the advantages of shellfish fertilizer: it contains chitin, stimulating the growth of harmful pest inhibitors.
Advantages of Using Shellfish Fertilizer
Here is how they use their magic. Exoskeletons include crabs, lobsters, shrimps, crabs, and many insects that contain chitin, the slow nitrogen that plants need. As it does not leak from the soil, it does not pollute waterways like dissolved nitrogen fertilizer.
But that is not all. Chitin-eating bacteria and fungi stimulate and multiply when the shells are placed in the soil. After decomposing the shells, they continue to eat certain chitinous pests, especially rhizomes, which can cause poor yields for many plants.
The shell also contains calcium carbonate, the main component of gardening lime. Calcium is another important element in plant health and it raises the pH in the soil in acidic places. Mollusc shells like oysters, shellfish, and mussels are also rich in calcium. They don’t break down as fast as crabs, but that’s not a disadvantage. White clamshell-like calcium tablets that release time at work.
Gardeners who do not live near the coast, rich in marine waste, can hold events with seafood restaurants and ask them to pull them off as an equal exchange. But you can also buy dried crabs, colored shells or shrimp shells in a bag. It is also a good option if neighbors oppose fresh seafood waste. (Look for a clean bowl without additives, such as urea.) If they are not available at local stores, check online sources like Valley Farm Supply.
Shellfish meal may be added, tilled, or racked just before planting, but the whole mussel shell is best crushed, turned into soil, and left to bleach for a month or more. It’s a bad idea to keep them on the ground, as you usually do with some crab shells when the ground is frozen. These flock of seagulls has a habit of collecting seashells and breaking them by throwing them into soil rocks.
Shellfish fertilizer Application
Use 2 tablespoons in each planting hole and mix the existing soil or add 5-10 pounds per 100 square feet. Shellfish are a great activator that you can add to your compost. Microorganisms help the composting process of organic fertilizers becomes faster and more efficient!
Final Thought
If you like seafood, save all shells from mussels, shellfish, or other crustaceans. You can chop them and spread them in the garden. The bark contains a large amount of calcium, which miraculously acts as a fertilizer for autumn herbs.
It is a great alternative to organic fertilizer, one that has previously been submerged in the sea and can overload the ecosystem.