I Am the Egg Man

A great big hello and welcome, Skunkers! I am the egg man baybee—LoL—in other words, today’s article takes a look at container growing with an egg. Yup … Just like it sounds. Now, what I am going to do with this article is make a little mini-series with it. There will likely be about two more “episodes” on this subject as I grow out and flower some cannabis plants using eggs as a prime nutrient source.

I first heard of using a buried egg (your basic chicken egg from the grocery store) in containers to grow plants from an old acquaintance like a year or maybe two ago. Searching online, I saw some peeps had done some YouTube vids on the subject, and my interest was piqued. I kept it rolling around in the back of my head until now. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the whole idea.

For this article, we’ll start at the beginning riding right along with me. I have semi-tested container growing with an egg (about 3 weeks ago) on a tomatillo plant in a 3-gallon container (photo above). In the next several days, I will be transplanting some cannabis lovelies into their flowering containers, and I am going to include an egg in most of their containers. I’m running a lot of clones, so this should be a good observational opportunity.

I Am the Egg Man, the Plan Stan

Here’s what we have going on here in my home gardens, A.K.A. “The Cozy Kingdom” … I have been selecting some serious SEA (Southeast Asian) genetics lately. Specifically, some of my Vietnam Black and my Black Forrest cannabis varieties. Oh, and I also have one lone Red Russian Skunk along for the ride. There are 4 clones of a sublime Black Forrest female, two clones of a Vietnam Black male, and a single clone of a Red Russian Skunk, a super uber skunk phenotype. I’m going to do this in two 3×3 Gorilla grow tents, and my lighting will be supplied by the awesome 420h full spectrum LED lights by NextLight. Of course, my gardens run using all TLO principles all the time.

So, I’m also going to be making seeds this run, and trust me when I say I would certainly NOT be doing any experiments on my breeders without very high confidence in the beginning. I’ll run three plants (1 VB male and 2 BF females) in one tent and four plants in the other (the RRS is the extra one). I’m using eggs in 2 of the female BFs, 1 of the VB males, and I’m also using an egg on the 1 skunk female. Alright, amigos, ya with me so far? Let’s have a look at the “nuts and bolts” next…

The Methodology of Container Growing with an Egg

I saw many different versions of doing this during my research on the subject. Some peeps crack the eggs, others hard boil them first, but I have decided to go with the Full Monty on this one, using the egg in its original/natural state from the chicken/grocery store. Here are what I think are the important things to do when placing the egg in the container.

1. In the new container, you’ll want to fill at least a few inches of the bottom with soil. Then simply make a small pile of soil to set the egg on to, sinking it down slightly but keeping the bottom of the egg at least a couple of inches off the floor of the container.
2. Fill the container with enough soil to cover the top of the egg and lightly water at this point.
3. Place your plant’s root ball gently on top and fill in with soil as per usual. Boom! That’s how hard that is, heh heh.

Why Container Growing with an Egg Works Perfectly, I Think

First of all, let me tell you, I have chosen a widely available egg source for this experiment—my local grocery store. The eggs I got are brown-shelled, also cage, antibiotic, and hormone-free. Okay, what we have here is Mother Nature’s perfect start-up supply of basically everything a growing organism needs, including plants. Dead animals do contribute to plants’ nutritional needs in nature, yup.

So, what we have here, is a protein bomb, basically, surrounded by a calcium carbonate (for the most part) shell. When I say protein, I am referring to gawd-awfully rich levels of nitrogen, plus calcium, etc.…You name it, and an egg pretty much has it all. Lots of micro and trace nutrients, along with vitamins and enzymes galore. You may think – “Yeah, but Rev, my plant doesn’t use a lot of those things to grow?” – and you would be sort of right, but mostly wrong. Because indirectly your plants benefit from all of it, because the soil-life benefits from all of it, you savvy?

Mostly bacteria will colonize around the shell due to the pH influences of the calcium-laden eggshell. Their activities will start to slowly decompose the shell, breaching it in about 10 days. Then all the opportunistic bacteria and fungi go to work on the yummy insides of the egg. A crazy explosion (in slow motion) of nutrients occurs for about the next 6+ weeks. Think about it.

Afterword

It is uber important you understand growing container design and CO₂ build-up. See this article link for further info there: Growing Containers II. Pretty soon, over at Kingdom Organic Seeds I am going to have the seeds from this run available, so don’t miss out on these lovelies. Make sure and help to support me in my TLO quest for Supernatural Growing, and grab a copy of my 2^nd edition True Living Organics book.

These plants will be growing in 10-year-old recycling TLO soil. I am going to attempt to flower these in 3-gallon Plant Warrior growing containers. I’ll keep some 5-gallon pots (also Plant Warriors) on hand and ready just in case this all goes horribly wrong. I will check in about every 2^nd or 3^rd digital article here at SKUNK as these baybees progress. I do these digital articles once a week. Keep tuned in because I have very high hopes, but there may be variables I am unaware of … yet, heh heh, we shall see. But I’m excited 😁 and I have a very good feeling about this.

Alrightythen, until next week—same bat-time—I gotta bounce now and go do some plant-related stuffs. Thanks for stopping by … L8r G8rs.

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