Hidden Ways To Use Bone Meal Fertilizer For Plants! (Nursery Ways)

People often don’t get good results even after using bone meal fertilizer, and one major reason is incorrect usage and rising soil pH. In some cases, the plant may even slow down its growth completely.

So in this post, I’ll tell you exactly how to use bone meal fertilizer correctly, an easy way to make it at home, and the hidden benefits of bone meal for plants. So let’s begin.

What is Bone Meal & Why Is It Important?

Bone meal is a powdered fertilizer made from the bones of dead animals. It’s really high in calcium and phosphorus, and its correct usage boosts pBone meal is a powdered fertilizer made from the bones of dead animals. It’s really high in calcium and phosphorus, and its correct usage boosts plant growth significantly.

In appearance, bone meal is a white to grayish-colored powder with a slight smell of decaying matter, which is why pets are often attracted towards the pot soil. We will talk more about this later.

Before buying bone meal fertilizer, make sure to choose the right one. Creamy or off-white colored bone meal is mostly made from crushed steamed bones.

It is very slow-release but better for long-term use, and we will also see a simple way to make it at home in just a bit.

On the other hand, I am holding this grayish-colored bone meal. It is bone ash made by burning bones at high temperature.

It is much higher in phosphorus and calcium and provides quicker growth. You can buy whichever you like, both options are added Here.

How to Make Bone Meal at Home?

Do you know you can also prepare bone meal fertilizer at home using collected bones?

So Here’s the recipe for making bone meal fertilizer at home. Collect the bones of animals. You can take chicken bones, cow bones, or whatever you can find.

Wash them and dry them in the sun. Then you can boil them in water or steam them in a pressure cooker for some hours.

This step may cause smell, so I suggest you do this in an open backyard.

Afterwards, the bones will become softer and easier to crush. You can also add some eggshell pieces to enhance the calcium content.

And here is our homemade bone meal fertilizer ready to use. The uneven crushing may make it seem less effective, but it’s not. It will go into the soil, decompose further with the help of microbes, and the roots will absorb the nutrients.

How to Correctly Use Bone Meal Fertilizer?

There are a lot of benefits of using bone meal fertilizer for our plants. It includes much better root growth, enhanced microbial activity in the soil, a stronger immune system, and it’s great for vegetable plants, especially during their fruiting stage. The calcium helps the fruits develop better and become more flavorful.

And here’s a question, have you ever faced blossom end rot on tomatoes? A few months back, I found this issue on my tomato plants.

They were also lacking growth, and such black patches were appearing on the fruit. At first, I had no idea why it was happening. Then I found out it was probably calcium deficiency.

So I used bone meal fertilizer, and within 2 to 3 weeks, the growing fruits stopped getting blossom end rot and started growing very healthy. A Guide on calcium benefits is also added Here.

Overall, bone meal fertilizer is very beneficial if used correctly.

How to Correctly Use Bone Meal Fertilizer?

There is one major drawback of using bone meal which often stops plant growth instead of improving it. This is why people often don’t get good results with bone meal. But I found the perfect solution to this problem.

Before I tell you the solution, understand this. When we use bone meal fertilizer in the soil, the soil pH tends to rise, which limits the absorption of nutrients by the roots. That is why we sometimes see slow plant growth after using bone meal.

So here is the fix that nurseries use. Instead of just using bone meal fertilizer directly in the soil, we can mix some compost into it. We know compost is slightly acidic, and mixing it with bone meal fertilizer helps balance out the pH.

Now when you use this bone meal compost, you won’t see any bad effects. Instead, you’ll see much faster growth, better nutrient absorption, and super fast root growth.

One tablespoon for a bowl of compost is enough. This one bowl of bone meal compost can be used on a 10 to 12-inch pot.

If you see your pets wandering around the porch soil after using bone meal, that’s because the decaying smell attract them, To prevent this, you can follow this.

First, mix the bone meal or it’s compost really well with the soil Then additionally, add some soil on the top surface. And the smell will be buried away.

You can also add some bone meal fertilizer into your compost bin. It will enhance your compost with added calcium and phosphorus.

You can also use bone meal in the traditional way by just adding a tablespoon into a 5 to 7-inch pot. It’s not certain that you will always face rising pH. You can also buy a good quality bone meal from Here.

I used bone meal fertilizer directly on my hibiscus plant one to two times along with my flower fertilizer.

and as the growing season started, my hibiscus plant started producing a lot of buds and flowers.

On What Plants Does It Work Well?

If you follow the correct method, you can use bone meal fertilizer on most plants including houseplants, flowering plants, your vegetable garden, and even cacti and succulents. But never in high dosage.

Side Effects To Be Careful About!

Before you use bone meal fertilizer, this is something you must know.

Frequent use of bone meal fertilizer can raise soil pH, which can limit nutrient absorption and stop plant growth.

That is why I bought a pH meter so I can analyze and act accordingly. One is also added Here if you would like to buy it. So always follow the correct method and never use too much.

No matter how good bone meal fertilizer is, if you keep using only bone meal, eventually your plant will stop growing because plants also need nitrogen, potassium, and other elements which bone meal doesn’t have.

So you should also consider using some other organic fertilizers. Over the years, I tried to explain most organic fertilizers, and a List is added Here which you can follow.

It’s all about bone meal fertilizer. Here is a detailed Guide on my homemade flower fertilizer that works amazingly well. Feel free to follow it.