How to Make Bone Meal Fertilizer with Bones
Learn how to make your own bone meal fertilizer for the garden using leftover bones from homemade bone broth. Such a great, simple, and resourceful way to reduce waste and feed your vegetable garden for free!
Equipment
- 1 Food processor or mortar
Ingredients
- Bones see notes
- Water
Instructions
- Make bone broth: place your bones in the Instant Pot, cover with water and a splash of apple cider vinegar (optional), and pressure cook for about 4-5 hours. If you don't have an Instant Pot, simmer your broth on low heat on the stove for about 16-24 hours.
- Clean the bones: once your bone broth is ready, strain it over a colander. Store the bone broth in glass jars and refrigerate. Let the strained out bones and residual meats/cartilages cool off just enough that you can handle them safely. Remove all the meat, fat, and cartilage from the bones. Then rinse the bones out until they are clean.
- Dry the bones: spread the cleaned bones out on a baking sheet. Bake in the oven at 250°F for 2-3 hours, or until the bones are dry and brittle. Alternatively, place the bones out in the sun for a few days to dry out.
- Grind the bones into bone meal: once the bones are dry, grind them up. You can use a food processor or blender, or you can also use a mortar and pestle or place them into a bag or towel and roll them over energetically with a rolling pin or beat them with a mallet until they break apart. To grind them in a food processor, break the bones up into small pieces first. If you're using poultry bones, you can easily do this with your hands, or you can use a hammer. When breaking up the bones, make sure they are completely dry inside. If not, place them back into the oven for another 30 minutes to 1 hour. Place the bones pieces in the food processor, pulse a few times, and then grind them at full power until they turn into powder.
- Once grinded, your meal bone is ready to be used as a fertilizer in your garden! You can store your homemade bone meal in a closed jar in a dark cool place for up to one year.
Notes
You can use any kinds of bones and cartilages to make bone broth. However, in order to be able to grind the bones into meal bone, choose poultry (chicken, turkey) bones, or very small bones from beef, pork or other bigger animals. I don't recommend using large, thick bones such as marrow bones if you intend to make bone meal as they would be too hard to grind at home.
If you want to make a bigger batch of bone meal at once, you can save your bones from several batches of bone broth. Just place the cleaned bones (after step 2) in a large bag in the freezer. Collect the bones until you have enough, then dry them and grind them.