Content
An almost forgotten fertilizer, bone meal is now again used in gardens as a natural organic product. It is a source of phosphorus and magnesium, but does not contain nitrogen. For this reason, fertilizer can be safely added to the soil without fear of an excess of nitrogen in the soil. Flour contains 15% phosphorus in the phosphate compound calcium. Until recently, bone powder was used to replenish calcium deficiency in animals.
Today, the product of bone processing is used as an organic phosphorus fertilizer. If industrial nitrogen and potassium fertilizing is replaced by humus and ash, respectively, then superphosphate replaces bone powder.
Why is it beneficial?
Organic fertilizers made from bone meal do not harm nature, polluting it with waste from the chemical industry. You can do it yourself. This is especially true for owners of private farmsteads who keep livestock for themselves. Even dogs cannot chew the tubular bones of large animals and there is nowhere to put such waste. But bones can be used to make fertilizer for garden beds.
Organic fertilizer from bones is also beneficial because it does not contain nitrogen, which leads to fattening of plants.If too much nitrogen fertilizer was applied in the previous year and it is not needed this year, bone meal can be used as “pure” phosphorus.
Phosphorus released from the bones helps to build up the root system of seedlings, strengthen the immunity of plants and ripen delicious sweet fruits.
What it is
Composition of living bone in percentage:
- water 50;
- fat 15.75;
- collagen fibers 12.4;
- inorganic substances 21.85.
When bones are heated, all organic substances burn, leaving only inorganic compounds. Collagen fibers, which burn out, give elasticity to fresh bones. After calcination, the bone becomes very brittle and crumbles with your fingers.
Of the inorganic substances remaining after calcination, the future fertilizer contains the most:
- calcium phosphate – 60%;
- calcium carbonate – 5.9%;
- magnesium sulfate – 1.4%.
Calcium phosphate formula Ca₃(PO4)₂. Plants get “their” 15% phosphorus from this substance.
Application
Livestock farmers are familiar with bone meal, which is added to feed to supplement calcium deficiency in dairy cattle and laying hens. But the use of the product is not limited to this, as gardeners also use bone meal as a fertilizer.
As a fertilizer, the powder is applied to the soil once a year, in the spring, during deep digging. Bones smolder and release useful substances slowly, so this type of fertilizer is classified as “long-lasting.” The fertilizer rate per square meter is 200 g.
You can add flour to the hole under the seedlings. To do this, pour a little powder into the bottom of the hole and mix it with the soil. Seedlings are placed on top and everything is sprinkled with soil.
This product is also used to deoxidize the soil, since after heat treatment of bones, calcium is the main component of the final product. Instead of ash or lime, a similar amount of bone meal can be added to the soil.
How to do it yourself
Bone meal is one of the few types of fertilizer that is easy to make yourself. The way to make bone meal at home is quite simple: the bones are calcined in a fire. When making bone fertilizer, the main task is to burn off all organic matter from the bone. Industrial technology involves a certain temperature regime and hermetically sealed containers. As a result, commercially produced bone meal is almost white in color.
Homemade powder will always be of lower quality, and the color will depend on the manufacturing method and the care of the manufacturer. There are two ways to make bone meal at home: put it in a metal container and put it in the oven to bake; just throw the bones into the oven along with the wood.
With the first method, the container must be covered with a lid to avoid heat loss and placed in the hottest place. In the second case, remove the bones from the oven after some time. The calcination time depends on the size of the bones and the temperature at which they are calcined. The heating time will have to be selected experimentally. Calcination often takes 12 hours of continuous heating. During this time, all organic components in the bones will burn out, giving elasticity to fresh bones. At the exit, the raw material for fertilizer from the container will be “white” in color, if you’re lucky, and the one harvested directly from the firewood will differ little in color from ash.
After calcining the bones, the flour blanks should crumble
At home, the most convenient way to make flour is from bird bones. They are smaller, thinner, and the organic matter in them burns out faster. After calcination, just crush the bones and the fertilizer is ready.
Are bone and meat and bone the same thing?
On websites you can often see that the adjectives “bone” and “meat and bone” are used as synonyms. In fact, these are fundamentally different products.
The raw material from which bone meal is made is bare bones. Even if there were traces of muscle tissue on them before being placed in the oven, during the calcination process it all burns out. At the end, as in the video above, there are fragile, brittle bones left, without the slightest sign of meat.
The raw materials for meat and bone meal are carcasses of dead animals and waste from slaughterhouses. Bone is also present in the raw material, but the bulk of it consists of skin and muscle tissue.
High-quality bone has virtually no odor. If there is a smell, it means that the packaging has been damaged, the contents have become wet, and the bone powder has begun to decompose.
Meat and bone meal is not used as a fertilizer unless there is a desire to breed insects that feed on carrion in the garden beds. The main obstacles to using meat and bone meal in the garden are its chemical composition and a completely different manufacturing technology. Meat and bone meal contains up to 60% protein, and the technology for its preparation involves defatting and drying in a centrifuge, rather than calcination until organic matter is completely removed.Because of this, after adding a meat and bone product to the garden bed, the usual processes of decomposition will take place there with all the delights in the form of a corpse odor and the proliferation of pathogenic bacteria, including tetanus bacillus.
When these bacteria enter the bloodstream through a wound, they cause “blood poisoning” (sepsis).
Even the color of meat and bone meal differs from bone meal. The meat-bone is reddish-brown in color, while the bone-bone is gray or gray-white. For bone meal, the color often depends on the degree of calcination and manufacturing technology.
The instructions for using meat and bone meal provide for the norms for feeding per farm animal, but not the norms for adding the product to the beds. Meat and bone meal is added to feed:
- fattening bulls and producers;
- pigs;
- stud stallions;
- chickens to eliminate protein starvation.
But plants are not fed this way. If the instructions for meat and bone meal indicate that it can be used as a fertilizer for plants, this is either a marketing ploy or the meal is not meat and bone meal.
The video briefly shows the technology for producing meat and bone meal.
Reviews of bone meal as a fertilizer from experienced gardeners are positive. Fortunately, flower shops do not sell meat and bone meal, otherwise everything would be different. Meat and bone meal and fish meal can be used as fertilizers, but it is more profitable to use them as feed for livestock.And even when using protein products as fertilizers, it is better to do this on large areas that are processed by machines.
Reviews
Conclusion
Bone meal, which is coming back into use, can replace superphosphate produced by the chemical industry. Its advantage is that in small quantities this substance is easy to make yourself at home. When growing indoor flowers, you can produce this fertilizer yourself using a conventional gas oven.
