Garden maintenance means more than just putting some plants in the ground and seeing what happens.
If you want your garden to succeed, you have to feed your plants with fertilizer.
There are many, many types of fertilizer, but bone meal is a great organic fertilizer especially if you’re raising the phosphorus level of your soil.
But, you can’t just throw on a handful of bone meal wherever, right? You need to add the proper amount.
So how much bone meal should you add per gallon of soil.
What to Expect? Ideally, you want to apply bone meal by square footage. In this article, we’ll show you the proper amounts so you can apply just enough and not too much of this powerful fertilizer.
What Is Bone Meal?
Bone meal is an organic fertilizer that is made up of mostly cow bones.
Of course, there are some products that have bones from other animals, but the package should tell you.
Bone meal is made from ground bones that are steamed, so what you are getting in the bag is basically a powder.
The main reason to use bone meal is to increase the phosphorus in the soil.
Phosphorus is important for flowering plants and is absorbed very easily to produce very nice large blooms.
How To Use Bone Meal For Your Garden
One of the more significant things that you need to take into consideration before you apply bone meal for your garden is that you are going to need to do a soil test.
The reason you want to do a soil test before you try using bone meal for your garden is that the pH level of the soil can affect phosphorus performance.
If your pH level is above seven, you may find that your phosphorus product is sadly less effective and you are wasting your time applying bone meal to your garden.
Bone meal is used to add phosphorus specific amounts to your soil but can also have impacts on other things in the soil like nitrogen.
Many gardeners will apply rotted manure for nitrogen levels in the soil and while it does provide some phosphorus, it may not provide the same amount that a bone meal will provide so you may say that rotten manure is less effective.
The best approach to both products is to utilize a combination of them.
How Much Bone Meal Per Gallon Of Soil?
After you’ve tested your soil to see what’s needed, it’s time to add the bone meal.
It’s easier to measure the amounts of bone meal by square meter rather than the gallons of soil.
In general- you will need to add around 10 lbs of bone meal for every 100 ft² of soil. The great thing about bone meal is that once you have applied the fertilizer, you are looking at helping the plants with up to four months of feeding.
If you are planting in containers you might not have 100 ft² to cover, but that is OK, you will usually find instructions on the packaging to tell you how many to apply.
For container gardening, it is best to mix the bone meal with wood ash, two parts wood ash and one part bone meal.
This will also ensure that your plants get a potassium boost as well.
Also make sure that when you apply the bone meal in containers, you can keep the bone meal as far from roots as possible, putting it too close could burn the roots and negate the benefits of the fertilizer.
What Are The Benefits Of Using Bone Meal?
There’s tons of good stuff about using bone meal in your soil.
For starters, it’s going to bring up those phosphorus levels like we just talked about.
Plus, bone meal breaks down, usually, over many months, so it’s a slow release fertilizer so your plants are getting constant phosphorus over time.
Most people will feed their plants with bone meal in late spring.
And that will usually be enough to get them through summer without needing to add more.
If you’re growing flowering plants, then there’s really nothing better than bone meal. It really boosts their growth and helps them produce much bigger, much brighter blooms.
Things like hydrangeas and roses respond particularly well to this type of fertilizer.
But it’s not just the flowers that will be better!
Bone meal also helps promote better root structure, so it’s great for reusable patches where you’re growing things like potatoes and carrots.
But one of the best things about bone meal is that it is organic.
So if you don’t want to kill your garden with chemicals, it’s a clear choice. It’s far better for the soil and is going to keep it in a as healthy as possible for as long as possible.
Also – Since it’s made from the bones of animals which have already been grown and killed for food, it helps eliminate waste in the farming industry.
Are There Any Risks To Using Bone Meal?
There’s been plenty of speculation about bone meal and whether one can contract BSE, or Mad Cow Disease, since it’s created from mostly cow bones. And that isn’t true.
First of all, no animals that have the disease can be made into bone meal since they are tested at slaughter.
Furthermore, wearing PPE while handling this product would eliminate any chance of infection which might not even happen first thing.
And one more thing – your plants can’t take up BSE contaminants so they will be completely safe.
Keep In Mind – A negative about using bone meal is that it is an animal product, so it might attract other pests to your garden, namely scavengers like raccoons or even the neighbor’s dogs.
Raccoons and dogs are not harmful but you’ve worked hard on your plants and anything eating them would be upsetting.
Using steamed bone meal lessens the chance of attracting others animals so you should always ensure that you getting this type of product.
If you have children or pets then you should handle bone meal with care. While bone meal is organic, it’s not food grade.
It doesn’t carry with it scary health risks but you’ll want to make sure children and pets don’t roll around in treated soil.
The problem mainly is that bone meal can clog the digestive tract because the little bits can adhere in the stomach.
The Right Thing to Do – You can mitigate problems if a child or pet ingested any by ensuring you mix the bone meal in with the dirt completely.
Conclusion
Bone meal is a great organic fertilizer to increase phosphorus in the soil.
You want to use about 10lbs of bone meal per 100 square feet of soil and make sure to mix it well.