Well, it has been a LONG time since my last posting since the waffle bowl101 blog. I just got back from talking to the Girl Scout "Daisy" troop here in Wachusett about
Bio-Degradable Seed Starting in Egg Shells!
So I am writing this blog for them and the attending parents so that they can see how easy it is to do this, and do this as a "usable" option for seed starting. Bio-degradable options for seed starting are great, as not only are they good for the environment but they are also easy on the tender plants roots. You can plant these directly in the ground, and the roots just grow thru the shell. Less disturbed roots on a new plant means that the plant can focus on growing rather than having to recover from a teased out rootball. You can also put it into a larger bio-degradable container (more about that at the end of the blog post tho)
When I first saw this notion of seed starting, it was on Pinterest. Pintrest is great for inspiring you, but not great on giving you the down and dirty of making things "feasible". This method was shown online in a perfectly charming cracked egg, using both sides of the shell. Some people in food service can crack eggs perfectly...I am NOT one of them! I tried to do this the way it was illustrated in Pinterest, and once I tried to wash the eggshells the item crumbled in my hands and there was not much left to plant in.
Fast forward to a year later and I am watching one of my favorite shows "America's Test Kitchen" (sense a theme here? Yeah, this is my ONLY kind of reality show...well that and anything Mike Rowe is in, but that is a blog for a different day), and they start doing their gadget segment on how to take a shell off of a hard boiled egg. I have to admit, I was anticipating a useless gadget and a waste of 5 minutes of my life. What I got was EGG SHATTERING! (get it? LOL...Ok you can stop rolling your eyes now). The showed how to take the top off a soft boiled egg using a Rosle Egg Topper. This is what I was looking for to grow seeds out of eggshells! It make a perfect rim around the top of the egg. The shell was structurally sound enough to not only wash, but also poke a drain hole in the bottom too!
Bless their hearts, they humored me, ran the transaction, and I went home to play! They are wonderful folks there, even if I seem like a raving lunatic.
So after some experimenting, this is what I came up with. I rarely eat soft boiled eggs of the shell, and this tool is expressly made for that. I use more raw eggs for baking and for cooking, so to use it on raw eggs it was!
The trick here is to cradle the egg (pointy side up, large bottom side down) in the egg carton. Place a oven mitt under the carton to cushion the "topping" of the egg. Place the egg topper on the egg like a hat, pull back the spring and let the lever "whack" the top, full force.
Pull the top off the egg and pour the liquid into a container (I use a small coffee mug) for use in whatever recipe and put the egg into a washing container for when I do my clean up.
It is really that simple. Then when dry, take a sharp knife tip and place it in the bottom of the eggshell with a touch of pressure. This will create the drain at the bottom to let the excess water out of the eggshell when you water your seedling. Spin the eggshell around to create the hole. Too much pressure here will crack the shell and make it unusable.
If you don't have a knife that will work, use a thumbtack, but be careful with using too much pressure all at once!
I save my shells next to the dishrack as they are cleaned and need to dry out. Once I collect enough of them, I then put them back on into the egg carton for storage until I am ready to plant! When I am ready to start the seedlings, I use the clear egg carton as a tray. Place in a warm spot and soon you will have seedlings!
Once the seedling gets to be around 1-2 inches high, you want to start thinking about putting it in the garden or using a larger container (some plants require more root development before you place them outside in a garden bed where they have to compete for water).
I found this video on Pinterest too
It is a Youtube video that is an excellent larger container. Made out of newspaper, the roots grow right out of this and into the garden when planted directly into your garden bed, giving you blooms earlier and no plastic pot to recycle!
Now the downside here( ...and yes, there is a downside) is that the Rosle Egg Topper has caught the attention of some media outlets, and now it is hard to find in most kitchen stores. Some may still have one or two on the shelf, but do be prepared to wait for a month or so until they catch up to demand.
Now the downside here( ...and yes, there is a downside) is that the Rosle Egg Topper has caught the attention of some media outlets, and now it is hard to find in most kitchen stores. Some may still have one or two on the shelf, but do be prepared to wait for a month or so until they catch up to demand.
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