Emmie's DIY CalMagPhos+ From Eggshells

This is an awesome product to use during the changeover period from growing to flowering/fruiting on all of your plants. For most of us, by using molasses we are able to get the magnesium that our plants need, but for our calcium needs, most of us have to fall back on a commercial product, and we end up buying one of the many versions of calmag supplement that are available. Because of a lock on the market by being the only source of an important nutrient, prices for this supplement, especially organic versions, are way overpriced.

I am going to show you how to make a superior calcium supplement that is cheap, easy to make and definitely cheaper than the commercial versions. By using organic materials, not only can calcium and magnesium be easily supplied, but also phosphorus, potassium and natural enzymes, making our homemade supplement just as "plus" as calmag+.

Any bones, sea shells, oysters, clam shells or egg shells can be used. Being severely landlocked in the midwest, I chose to use eggshells to create my calcium phosphate.

First collect about a dozen eggs and wash each egg out after use to get rid of the filaments and protein inside. I washed mine out and sat them on the windowsill for a couple of days to dry out, and then using my hands crumbled them up into a bowl.
DSCF56052.JPG

The next step is to pan fry the egg shells to the point that most of them are brown or even black, and there are just a few white ones left. Heat changes the shells, and the white ones will be your phosphorus source and the burned ones will be the calcium.

Here they are just starting to turn
DSCF56062.JPG

And here we have the eggshells burned just right.
DSCF5607.JPG

Next we put the cooked shells into a coffee grinder or in some other way grind them up into a powder.
DSCF56082.JPG

Next, add 5 parts vinegar to the pile of powdered eggshells. I used an organic organic apple cider vinegar in order to capture its natural goodness too. This step will fizz up quite dramatically, depending on how well you ground up the egg shells, and I suggest doing this in your kitchen sink. The vinegar is going to eat the egg shells, and it will fizz for a while.
DSCF5609.JPG


DSCF56101.JPG

After about half a day, the fizzing should mostly stop. Seal the jar up and let this ferment for 20 days. Filter into another jar, and you have homemade calcium phosphate. Use it by adding 1 tablespoon per gallon of water. Add 1 tablespoon of molasses to the gallon and you will have with the combination the equivalent of using calmag+ at the recommended dosages.

I spent $18 on my last quart of organic calmag. My homemade product costs pennies per gallon to produce. Guess what I will be using from now on?
 
I need stuff like this because of where I live they don't sell calmag. So I have to rely on homemade products. This is especially helpful because I also us Reverse Osmosis water. I've made this once before but not like yours. I didn't clean them as good meaning I didn't remove the membranes and didn't I put in them a frying pan. I didn't know about those steps. Thank you!
 
You can do this with powdered oyster shell also. The process is longer but it works. Not sure if one is better than the other. Both smell er..uh.. wonderful. :)

Dang Emlet! You are on fire with this stuff lately! :adore: So have you bought a Scoby yet? :) I can't wait to see you start training one. Wait until you see living seedling pots :hippy:
 
You can do this with powdered oyster shell also. The process is longer but it works. Not sure if one is better than the other. Both smell er..uh.. wonderful. :)

Dang Emlet! You are on fire with this stuff lately! :adore: So have you bought a Scoby yet? :) I can't wait to see you start training one. Wait until you see living seedling pots :hippy:

Yep, you can not only use oyster shell, but any bones will also work, but each harder to work with and burn down than our egg shells. Also, most self sufficient off the gridders will have chickens... its much harder to train those oysters to lay down their shells, especially here in the landlocked midwest.

Teach me dear Gypsy... do you mean growing scobies in a jar to make kombucha?
 
Yep, you can not only use oyster shell, but any bones will also work, but each harder to work with and burn down than our egg shells. Also, most self sufficient off the gridders will have chickens... its much harder to train those oysters to lay down their shells, especially here in the landlocked midwest.

Teach me dear Gypsy... do you mean growing scobies in a jar to make kombucha?

Chickens are better for other stuff too. Oyster poo is hard to collect lol. Plus here you are not supposed to take oyster shells from the beach. Most farms will give them away though. My chickens constantly dig them up in my yard lol. I'm fairly close to the beach. Birds and critters carry them in.

I've been trying not to go on a rant in your threads :rofl: but yes. Kombucha and Jun SCOBY's can be trained away from creating a beverage for us and make one for composting instead. I think I've also had success adding different bacteria, yeasts and mycorrhizae to the colony. I started with about 22 of each not including what is already in the colony. I'm sure some have passed on as the colony adjusts to it's new occupants. As I said earlier, nature has a way of sorting itself out. The only trouble with my experiment is that I don't know who lived and who died. I can identify some under the scope, but I'm not nearly qualified to sort them all out. My experimental SCOBY is very filament-ish. Not much resembles a Kombucha scoby any more except the residual waste that settles in the bottom of the jar. I think the term SCOMBY may be more accurate now lol.

Thanks for letting me get that out :laughtwo: I feel better. :high-five:
 
Here we are 10 days into the fermentation. You can see two clear layers of calcium and phosphorus settling out and over time getting smaller and smaller as more ferments into the solution. I am coming along about once a day and shaking the jar real well, and I have noted that all of the pressure seems to be gone now, even after shaking. This one is easy to maintain and keep going... it just takes a while. Looking at the layers of sediment, I have resolved to use twice as much vinegar next time with my dozen eggshells.

Ten more days to go!

calphos_working.JPG
 
Today is day 20 of our fermentation and our cal/phos mixture should be ready. Note the distinct layers that the calcium and the phosphorus have settled into:

DSCF5654.JPG


There seems to have been a little bit of fluid loss in this conversion process, but not much, and after filtering I ended up with this much in the bottle.
DSCF5655.JPG


Then, in order to make a good all around supplement, molasses was added to fill up the bottle.

DSCF5656.JPG


Here we have our complete, Cal-Phos-Mag-Plus supplement. I will start using this the watering before the flip, and will continue for weeks 1-2 of flower, and then again on weeks 5 and 6, along with the proper flowering or growth extract and fish emulsion. So far, results in both gardens, inside and out, show that the natural organic nutrients are working much better than anything I have ever bought commercially. It is more work producing your own, but along with the significant cost savings, the end products are better than what they can bottle and leave on the shelf to sell... our mixes are alive and active, theirs are cooked and dead by the time you get them. Try this. It is not hard, and I am betting that the results will leave you as stunned as I have been.

This is the end of the instructional part of this thread... from here on out will be any comments about the effectiveness or use of the product in my gardens. I will be using this product as I described for the next several rounds of gardens, and by that time I should have more info about how it works. Until then, I wish you luck in your own efforts to divorce yourself from the dependence on commercial companies to supply you your nutrients... everything you need is in your kitchen and your backyard or can be brewed up from common materials. All it takes is a little bit of science, faith in mother nature and a whole lot of love, and you can do this too!
The Greenest of all Blessings from my gardens to yours,
Sense Emilya
 
I almost changed that we will see, I was searching for a grow santb mentioned You doing "coco pasive hydro" could you steer me in the path of such wonders ? :green_heart: is it organic aswell ?

Wasn't me, but I have advised people about using coco as a passive hydro by aerating the nutrient mix and watering twice a day after reading how it is done. Since you would usually be adding synthetic nutrients to a hydro setup, I could not consider it to be organic growing, but that is ok, synthetics work too.

Check out this thread for how to use coco... I got a lot out of this one:

How I grow in coco Youtube videos and pics
 
Hi Emmie
Thank you for giving the recipe.. in the "old days" I only powdered the shells and added them to the soil when making compost. But I was looking into cal mag and stubled into this thread :) The 5 or 10 parts of vinegar ( I go with 10?) and I was wondering 10 parts of the container I want to use?? Stupid blonde here...
 
Hi Emmie
Thank you for giving the recipe.. in the "old days" I only powdered the shells and added them to the soil when making compost. But I was looking into cal mag and stubled into this thread :) The 5 or 10 parts of vinegar ( I go with 10?) and I was wondering 10 parts of the container I want to use?? Stupid blonde here...
Nothing is really critical in the organic world when it comes to measurements... it turns out that the need to be exact is a human thing... in nature, a lot of things happen anyway. The last time I made a batch with the shells of about a dozen eggs, and a little bottle of vinegar. I think I used too much vinegar per eggshell on that round. Since then I have been saving my eggshells, and have about 5 dozen cleaned out and crushed. I have an event coming up where we will be going through 40 dozen eggs. I plan to at least double the amount of eggshells that I have now, and I am going to use a big bottle of natural apple cider vinegar. I have no idea how it will go, but I am pretty sure that my plants will love it, nonetheless. No stress here in natural organics... it all comes out naturally.
 
Nothing is really critical in the organic world when it comes to measurements... it turns out that the need to be exact is a human thing... in nature, a lot of things happen anyway. The last time I made a batch with the shells of about a dozen eggs, and a little bottle of vinegar. I think I used too much vinegar per eggshell on that round. Since then I have been saving my eggshells, and have about 5 dozen cleaned out and crushed. I have an event coming up where we will be going through 40 dozen eggs. I plan to at least double the amount of eggshells that I have now, and I am going to use a big bottle of natural apple cider vinegar. I have no idea how it will go, but I am pretty sure that my plants will love it, nonetheless. No stress here in natural organics... it all comes out naturally.

I have collected eggshells from 12 eggs and I am planning on growing 5 plants as a starter will it be enough for them?
or is it better to make A LOT of it and store it in glass jars?
I am thinking of trying to clone too.
 
I have collected eggshells from 12 eggs and I am planning on growing 5 plants as a starter will it be enough for them?
or is it better to make A LOT of it and store it in glass jars?
I am thinking of trying to clone too.

it seems to me that a dozen eggs makes about enough for one run, considering that the cal-mag-phos is given from late veg to mid flower only. I made one small batch to get started and then started saving up for a larger batch that I will store. My goal is to have enough natural organics made over the summer to last me all winter and spring.

A note on the eggshells...
are you peeling the inside membrane from the shells? It is a pain to do, but it really makes for a cleaner product in the end. No harm if you dont, but one thing I learned is that membrane is one of the best natural bandages known to humankind. Next time you get a cut or a scrape or burn that you need to deal with, peel out a membrane and put the sterile side down on the cut. You will be amazed. The nutrients and growth hormones in this bandage will cut the normal healing time by 66%.
 
Back
Top Bottom