"Sue" wrote:
Does this mean I have to start drinking coffee? Ewwww.

Oh, I guess you can use orange peels and unused green stalks and
tea. I've been mixing in some watermelon rinds and such lately. A
cheap blender tends to help alot. I've had pretty good luck doing
this and mixing it into a bucket of sand. It was almost pure sand last
year and now I've got some nicer soil in various areas now.

Do the coffee grounds and banana peels add nutrients or are they
just to make the soil more water retentive?

Coffee grounds add magnesium and some other things, I think
magnesium is the big bonus from coffee grounds. Banana peels
I've heard add nitrogen and potassium. I've always known that
bananas were a high source of potassium but somewhere I read
that it's a high source of nitrogen as well... browse down through
the list of things at the following link... I'm not sure how much
potassium the peel contains... but there's some good stuffs in it...

http://www.mastercomposter.com/ref/orgmat2.html

Do you have to worry about adding some type of tree detritus
that might add something bad to the soil?

:-) The way I think of it... the trees were here doing what they do
before I ever came along, before man ever came along. It's the
way it's been for thousands of years, probably hundreds of
thousands of years. I had to look up "tree detritus". :-) I've noticed
that avocado detritus (from the buds and dead leaves, all the leaves
fall off the tree) adds something. It helps. There might be some
specific plants or tree detritus to not use... but you'll have to do a
search through Google to figure that out. Just type in the name of
the tree or plant and add the word "detritus" or "compost". I tend
to try to look at more than one link to get an idea about what's up.
You'll end up browsing through some garbage, but it'll at least give
you an idea of what's up.

The only sand I can come up with here is expensive "play" sand.

I wasn't suggesting sand for you. :-) I tried to state that when I water,
the "sand" is dry again in a about 90 minutes (unless it's got some other
things mixed in it to help retain the moisture).

Thanks. Now, who do I know who drinks coffee? Hmmmm.

Supposedly people go around and pick up coffee grounds from Star-
bucks coffee shops. I imagine you can go around to other places and
do something similar as well.

Hope that helps.

--
Jim Carlock
Please post replies to newsgroup.