"Jeff Layman" wrote in
message ...
On 22/11/2010 23:54, Bertie Doe wrote:
So far, all my spent coffee grinds, have ended up in
my compostor ( I
believe there was a thread on ukrg last year).

After reading the following article, I'll separate
the coffee and use it
as a spray next year, on the allotment. It also
mentions tea leaves as a
good source http://preview.tinyurl.com/34gjnw2

Has this article just been published in ScienceNews?
It refers to a 27 June edition of Nature, but
Hollingsworth and Campbell (two authors mentioned)
published the paper "Pest Control: Caffeine as a
repellent for slugs and snails" in the 27 June 2002
edition of Nature
(http://www.nature.com/nature/journal.../417915a.html).

Looks like it may be an old article.

Assuming that it works well, probably the main reason
why caffeine is not used commercially against slugs
and snails is that it is not patentable.


As we know, the compounds in coffee are numerous. If
'Big Chemistry" could isolate the one that kills slugs
....... there would be another ££££ big killing