I once buried the leftover bones from bone broth making into my garden. I had attempted at making my own bone meal but failed because the pork bones were just too tough and strong. I never find out what happened to the buried bones, but I never saw them again despite digging up the area for planting after a couple of months later. So, I guess they’ve composted.
Bone meal is the dried and ground powder form of animal bones. It contains a good amount of phosphorus and calcium and is a wonderful fertilizer for the plants.
After the latest bone broth (stock) making recently, I attempted at making bone meal again. The soften bones were cooled and then crushed with hands and spread thinly on a baking tray lined paper. Then they were sun-dried and air dried outside for a few days. After drying, I crushed those bit sizes bones into powdery form = meal if any. Some were still too tough to be crushed, so I let it be.
Behold. Homemade bone meal! Isn’t this amazing?
While the steps are not perfect yet as I couldn’t make use of all the bones to make the bone meal, I consider this a very good learning experience.
How to use bone meal? I take some and sprinkle on the plants. Then I water the plants a bit (sorta wet it) so that some of the bone meal can go into the soil. It’s a lazy method. The hardworking method is to mix the bone meal with soil and water it. If you leave the bone meal on the soil, they could attract animals into your garden.
For very tough bones that couldn’t be crushed, I air dried them whole and buried them in my garden and some smaller ones were just tossed on the pots. There is also an option of using a blender to blend the soft/dried bones but I choose not to do it at this time since the bones are tough.
Updated on 30th Mar 2020:
Please check out this post where I share with you how to make bone, prawn and fish meal blend fertilizer. You won’t believe how easy it is!
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