Is bone meal fertilizer part of your gardening, growing toolbox? Growing plants domestically isn’t as cut-and-dry as allowing plants to grow in their natural habitat.
One of the problems is that a garden setting tends to have plants that take from the soil without giving back.
Another issue is that removing debris that would normally compost itself is generally important to help enrich said soil.
Growing plants in a container are even worse because there’s less access to organic waste.
This is why fertilizer is usually necessary, and repotting container plants is necessary. The problem is that chemical fertilizers aren’t always the best option and can burn your plant.
A lot of plant lovers go organic by making their own compost.
But whether you go chemical or organic, you’ll find your plants can still become deficient in certain nutrients.
And this is where a bone meal comes in.
How To Use Bone Meal Fertilizer?
A bone meal isn’t a full-blown fertilizer but rather a nutritional supplement for your fertilizer.
Here’s everything you need to know about a bone meal, what it does, and how to apply it.
What Is Bone Meal Fertilizer?
Bone meal is a natural byproduct of meat processing.
As animals are slaughtered, the bones are ground into a powder and then steamed.
The resulting bone meal is useful for ensuring your plants have proper nutrition.
While you can make a bone meal from any animal, a commercial bone meal usually comes from cows and is made at slaughterhouses.
The meal is often sold in a pellet or liquid form, but powders are the most popular and can be made at home – if you don’t mind the extra work.
You can also pair the bone meal with blood mean (made by dehydrating blood), which is a great nitrogen source.
Benefits Of Bone Meal
The primary benefit of bone meal is its high level of phosphorus content.
Phosphorus is essential in producing flowers and for a plant’s overall health.
As you might suspect, bone meal is also a great source of calcium and can produce a bit of nitrogen.
Plants bolstered by bone meal will produce stronger stems and foliage, have a better immune system, produce fuller and healthier blooms, and improve fruit and seed yields.
It can be used in gardens, container plants, and lawn care supplements.
Disadvantages Of Bone Meal
For what it does, bone meal is a pretty great supplement, but it isn’t perfect.
For starters, it’s often referred to as a fertilizer but doesn’t provide enough nutrition to be used as a standalone fertilizer.
Remember that bone meal has to degrade, so you won’t see an immediate benefit when using it.
Of course, subsequent applications will continue to provide benefits, and you’ll only need to apply it periodically, making the slow release a temporary disadvantage at best.
Because it’s made from organic remains, you must ensure it’s well-blended into the soil, or it may attract unwanted scavengers.
Also, while it can be useful in any soil that has acidity or is neutral, this effectiveness ends when the soil hits a pH of 7.0.
Finally, phosphorus can be a little tricky to work with.
An excess will cause iron and zinc deficiencies, significantly weakening the plant’s health.
It will also leech potassium out of the soil if there’s too much, resulting in the plant’s weaker immune system.
It can also lead to chlorosis, a condition in which plants cannot produce sufficient chlorophyll, resulting in yellowing leaves.
Thankfully, if you only use bone meal as needed, the soil will naturally help regulate the release of phosphorus, so there’s far less risk of having an excess.
How To Use Bone Meal?
Due to the risks involved with providing too much phosphorus to a plant, it’s important to test your soil’s nutrient levels before adding bone meal to it.
You can find soil test kits online and at most decent-sized garden centers.
You can also send soil samples to the labs of agricultural organizations and universities for testing (although this will be a little more expensive and take longer for the results).
The two main factors you’ll want to check are the phosphorus levels and the soil pH.
Remember, anything over 7.0, and you’ll just be wasting your bone meal.
Pay attention to any package instructions, but as a general rule, you’ll want to add 1 tablespoon for every 2 square feet of soil.
This equates to about 3 cups per 100 square feet for larger areas.
The best time to add bone meal is when you’re repotting, transplanting, or adding fresh soil on top of the ground.
Mix the bone meal directly into the loose soil, then backfill.
If you don’t need to add soil, sprinkle the bone meal directly onto the ground and rake it in.
Bulbs and spring plants should be fed twice per year, giving half the dose in the fall and the rest early in spring.
Also, if you use only one fertilizer ratio for your plants, you can add a smaller amount of bone meal right before the plant is due to bud.
This helps simulate the old garden tactic of switching from a higher nitrogen mix (to encourage foliage growth) to a higher phosphorus mix (to encourage blooms) without needing to invest in and store multiple types of fertilizer.
Because the bone meal is a powder, you’ll want to add it when the weather’s dry.
Once mixed into the soil, you can lightly water the plant so the bone meal can begin to degrade.
However, getting the meal wet before blending in will result in a gooey mess.
Some Final Notes
A bone meal is just one of many supplemental products you can add to the garden.
It pairs really well with blood meal to provide a more well-rounded supplement.
You can also add crushed eggshells for additional calcium.
Used coffee grounds (when mixed with dried leaves or shredded coffee filters) can provide nitrates but is better suited for feeding beneficial nematodes and earthworms than directly providing nutrition for your plant.