Bone Meal, 2.5-18. 5-0

Traditional product valued by organic gardeners. Use any time of the year, excellent in Autumn for bulbs, new plantings, trees, vegetable beds, lawns and borders. This is a fine sterilized grade that is guaranteed to come from sources free from B.S.E. .

BONE MEAL Probably the most popular of all fertilizers and frequently misused, many gardeners use bone meal and nothing else. Bone meal is produced by processing animal bones in a variety of manners, the commonest being to steam them to remove fat and to sterilise. The bones are crushed to a fine powder, which has an analysis of approximately 4% nitrogen and 20% phosphoric acid.

Unsterilised bone meal is alleged to carry a health risk and is not as effective as the sterilised product and is, therefore, not recommended. The phosphoric acid portion is unavailable to plants and gradually becomes soluble and useful as a plant nutrient, so the finer it is the more readily it begins to work. Complex soil chemistry often locks up phosphates and, therefore, bone meal will not be effective in limey soils where super phosphates are better.