There’s an old garden legend that recommends planting a whole egg along with your tomatoes and other vegetables. How worthwhile is that?
By Larry Hodgson
Sometimes you think an old garden myth is so deeply buried that it has been long forgotten. Then, suddenly it’s back and all sorts of people are claiming it works. Well, such is the case with the idea of planting a whole egg in a planting hole as a nutrient supplement for your plants. I hadn’t heard this one in decades, and yet, all of a sudden, there seems to be a dozen websites, most repeating the same text word for word, that claim that a whole egg is just what your plant needs.
The Myth
Here is the myth in an eggshell:
Before you plant tomatoes (the example we’ll use here, although it would also apply to other plants that like rich soil), dig an extra deep planting hole, drop a whole egg into the bottom and cover it with soil. Some sites say to leave it intact; others, to crack it open. You choose!
Then plant your tomato plant as usual and it will produce more and better fruit, plus be more resistant to disease. One variant says you need to place more than one egg per plant: up to 9 or so.
This seems very logical. After all, eggs contain nutrients of all sorts (phosphorus, calcium, potassium, sodium, copper, iron, magnesium, manganese, selenium, and zinc, among others) and when the yolk and white rot, they’ll release them so you plant will be able to take advantage of them. Plus, eggshells are very rich in calcium, as they are 98.4% calcium carbonate. It all sounds perfect! What could be wrong?
Stink
Well, there is the stink, for starts. The real reason you have to plant eggs so deeply is because they give off horrible odors when they rot. So, the deeper they are covered in soil, the less you will be bothered. But it’s not always enough.
Digging Animals
At lot of animals love eggs. Even stinky, rotting ones. Dogs, rats, raccoons, skunks and various other creatures will often trash the garden looking for them. Another reason why you have to plant the eggs deeply.
Not That Many Minerals Make It to the Plant
Plants are best at retrieving minerals near the surface of the soil, where their fine root hairs are most abundant, not so much so at dragging them up from the depths. And one egg, especially, really doesn’t deliver much of a fertilizer punch: there’s about a pinch of minerals (and a small pinch, at that) in each one. If you already routinely add compost and an all-purpose organic fertilizer to your soil at planting, as most gardeners do, an egg really won’t make a huge difference.
That said, if your soil is poor and you aren’t putting much effort into improving it . . . well, a rotting egg, weak as it may be, is certainly better than nothing!
But they’re good at supplying calcium, right? Aren’t eggshells supposed to give a distinct boost of calcium to plants? Well, eggshells would do so if only they decomposed, but they don’t. Not to any discernable degree within the first year. The calcium carbonate that makes them up can take years to break down, even decades. Eggshells usually need to be ground up into fine particles to make a truly interesting calcium additive … and even then still take take years to break down. But whole eggs won’t be getting that treatment. The big pieces of eggshell they leave will probably last decades.
Also, do your plants even need more calcium? It’s one of the world’s most widely available minerals and is rarely lacking in garden soils. The only way to truly find out is to have a soil analysis test carried out. Otherwise, unless your soil is highly acid, you can just assume that it contains plenty of calcium, even more so if you’ve been adding compost and other fertilizers to it over the years.
But Eggshells Help Prevent Blossom-End Rot, Right?
Actually, blossom-end rot, a disease of tomatoes and peppers, won’t get much help (if any at all) from eggshells. This deficiency disease is mostly due to irregular watering. A fruit needs a supply of calcium as it forms. If the soil is too dry, the roots can’t absorb the calcium already present, and blossom-end rot results. You can read more on blossom end rot here: Preventing Blossom-End Rot on Tomatoes. But the best way to avoid it remains watering as needed.
A Waste of a Good Egg
Given the rising cost of food these days, it seems a waste to give a good egg to a plant that doesn’t really need it. If you want to experiment with planting an egg in your garden, might I suggest using a cracked one you dare not use or eggs that have passed their expiry date.
And unless you raise your own chickens, using an egg as fertilizer costs more than an equivalent amount of all-purpose fertilizer.
So, be prepared: garden influencers of all types will be promoting using whole eggs as fertilizer this summer. You might want to keep your nose plugged!
Top photo: Carmen Dorin & Sergeeva Leka, depositphotos
Have you even tried it? I have. I have never smelled the egg above ground (which is what makes me wonder if you’ve even tried). I also have never had an animal dig my plant up due to the eggs with plenty of raccoons in the area – I’ll give you this one as a possibility, maybe your animals are more determined. The minerals do make it to the soil and eventually the plant – it may be delayed, but aren’t you consistently re-planting tomatoes in your boxes?
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I have ducks, and an abundance of eggs in the spring. Duck eggs are a bit different than chicken eggs, more fat in yolk stronger thicker shells, different protein. Anyhow, I crush my eggs when adding to my in ground tomatoes, and I had very successful tomatoes that year. Alas, I did not do a control, so I can’t say if it was any better, but no complaints, I traded my abundance of duck eggs for an abundance of tomatoes. Always crush them, so there is now pewtrid exploding surprise later (yes, they do explode and it’s one of the worst smells). If you can find someone with poultry who doesn’t sell, they might just have some extra’s they don’y mind parting with and don’t want to clean (duck eggs are notoriously dirty and a pain to hand wash). My 2 cents.
I’m planting lettuce leaves, and bacon strips under every tomato plant this year along with homemade mayonaise from artisinal chicken eggs! Only the best for my garden..
I also wasted eggs planting them when planting tomato plants. It would be interesting to hear from gardeners what has worked for them and produced a great tomato! I need input on cherry tomatoes. We like the medium sized cherry tomatoes best and would plant in pots only and use trellises. Any advice as to which tomato to buy, watering, etc. Should I use a fertilizer and if so, which one? Love Laidback Gardener as it has helped me in so many ways to improve my gardening skills!
Maybe this article will be helpful: https://laidbackgardener.blog/2020/05/18/top-15-questions-about-growing-tomatoes-answered/
Now that is a weird one that I never heard of.
However, my paternal paternal great grandfather instructed me to roll up a single leaf of some sort of cat tail like plant to plug into the ground under each corn seed. I remember that he cut the leaves from the bank of the Guadalupe River in Alviso. I suspect that they were cat tails, but I am not certain. He shared them with neighbors and my maternal grandfather. It now seems weird that an uncomposted leaf was used like that. I can find no information about it, myth or otherwise.
I wasted 2 dozen eggs last year doing this. The tomato plants with no eggs did better than the ones with. Silly me.
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That’s a new one for me. If you have chickens skip using their eggs and use the manure – well aged of course – instead, far more beneficial.
Ha, I’d never heard that one! The weirdest “tomato planting hole suggestion” I’d seen was fish heads along with crushed aspirin and various other magical ingredients. I imagine that fish heads would have the same problem of stinking and attracting animals.
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Nicely explained. There are so many of these “myths”, especially about tomatoes. Apparently you can bury a fish or a chicken or maybe even your spouse. I like you garden myths section.
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Thanks explaining why this would and would not be of benefit. I powder my eggshells in a coffee grinder, but like almost everything else they go in the compost pile. I used to put a handful in with a transplant and fert.
Always the best way of recycling them! ?
There a lot of crazy myths out there, this is a new one for me. I have heard the egg shell for BER, but not the whole egg.
My answer is use well composted mix in place of witchcraft. Home made compost is best & why not put your eggs shell in the compost instead of the landfill. Unless you have your own chicken, then grind & feed the egg shells to them, hen need it far more then the garden. You can buy oyster flour for chickens & the garden, but I am not sure how well it will work.
The best watering system that I have used is the drip system, the wick system may work too.
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