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5 Ways Blood Meal Can Help Your Garden

  • Writer: Andrew Hemmer
    Andrew Hemmer
  • Jul 21, 2022
  • 4 min read

Updated: Apr 9


Blood Meal (dried blood, animal blood) is an excellent way to improve the soil and what you are growing. Whether it be for a garden in your backyard, container growing on your porch or home, or in a tent under a nice LED light, blood meal does the trick for soil health and leafy greens! If you are looking for a soil additive that is a slow release fertilizer, look no further than blood meal fertilizer. It is cost effective and worth the investment if you are looking on improvements to your crop. Below you will see 5 reasons why Blood Meal is a good option for you.



1. Great Source of Nitrogen


One of the most important benefits of using blood meal, adding Blood Meal for Less's Blood Meal will help to restore and improve nitrogen levels in your garden soil. Especially if you are not wanting to add anything else but that, as it contains no phosphorus or potassium. If you are looking for something that is high in nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, consider using other organic fertilizers like feather meal or alfalfa meal. Throughout the industry, you can put nitrogen levels around 12%. With this ratio, you can add nitrogen for your plants for a fast boost to create lush and green plants, especially in garden beds or vegetable beds. Bacteria help break organic blood meal down to its raw components, which enables the root system to better absorb its properties for months during the growing season.


Always be on the side of applying less first until you get used to using it with your soil. Its application is 1lb per 100 square feet of soil. Be sure to till into the top few inches of your soil. Try to apply before you start your planting season, and allow the blood meal to remain in the soil for a week or two before planting. This gives the bacteria time to break down the blood meal into what the plant needs. High-quality blood meal with a high nitrogen content should not be applied to the soil right at planting. It's best to apply to the soil before planting or during the vegetation stage of plant growth in organic gardening.


2. Makes Soil Slightly More Acidic


Soil PH is SO important when it comes to the health of not only the plants but also your soil. Blood Meal is slightly acidic and will help to make soil a little more acidic. This really helps with plants like garlic, onion, peppers, berries, and other acid loving plants. As you can see based on the above photo, having your PH at 6.5 at all times is best for proper major nutrient uptake. Be sure to always start your growing season off with a soil test. You can find soil test kits on Amazon and even your local garden center. Try using blood meal and bone meal (animal bones) together to get the best of both substances in your soil.


3. Kick-starts Your Compost Pile


Among other benefits of using blood meal, composting, is an art in itself and needs certain things to to break it down into humus materials to feed your plants when organic gardening. Along with being sure to turn it everyday or every few days you need to add certain products to it to increase NPK and help it heat up and break down. Blood Meal is one of the products to add to your compost pile to help and encourage beneficial microbes to break down the compost. Apply blood meal at a rate of 2.5 ounces for each cubic yard of compost (grass clippings, fruit peels, and egg shells.


4. Keeps Rabbits and Deer Away From Your Plants


Ever came out to the garden early in the morning to find a few fluffy bunnies or young deer munching on your hard work? It is very frustrating but you don't want to apply poisons or kill them via other means. Many gardeners choose the natural route and actually repel them. Blood Meal is a great repellent for rabbits and deer. Blood Meal is not odorless and has the smell of rotting flesh. Animals that would normally want to eat your plants are going to smell this rot and not want to come around it. Many choose to hang it in bags strategically around the garden and some choose to sprinkle a light application to the entire garden.


5. Blood Meal is Cost Effective


Blood meal is one of the more cheap amendments for your soil that you can buy. It is readily available from Midwest meatpacking plants. Expect to pay $2-3 per pound of this awesome creation but it is VERY concentrated and you only need a cupful per 20feet of garden space. Click here to be taken to our shop page where you can purchase our blood meal and get it lightning fast for use in your garden or container grow.




5lb bag of blood meal



Content created by Hemmer Media Consulting

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