How to Use Bone Meal on Flowers

Bone meal provides phosphorus to flowers and helps them grow well. You can find steamed bone meal at your feed store or garden center. If you find it at a feed store, the label usually expresses its phosphorus content as elemental phosphorus. As such, the number is usually 2.3 times higher than that on the label for phosphate in bone meal from a garden center. Bone meal works well to release phosphorus in soils with a pH below 7.0.

Spade
Flower bulb

Instructions

- 1
  Take a soil sample and have a garden center or cooperative extension office analyze its pH level. Bone meal only works effectively when the soil pH is below 7.0, so don't bother applying bone meal if the soil test result shows a higher pH level.
- 2
  Use a spade to dig a hole several inches below the depth of the flower bulb you want to plant.
- 3
  Scoop a handful or about 1 1/2 oz. of bone meal into every 1 square foot of planting hole. Stir the bone meal with the soil thoroughly.
- 4
  Place the flower bulb in the hole you dug and refill the hole with soil.

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