On Sat, 7 Jul 2012 14:31:27 -0700 (PDT), Higgs Boson wrote:
Toss 'em in the compost heap; add compost whenever you've got some and
it's the growing season.

***I confess that when the City started accepting food waste to grind
up with their quarterly compost giveaway, I sold my not-very-good
composter, So sue me!

Composter??? g As fancy as I've ever gotten with compost is four pallets
wired together to make an E -- shovel the pile from one side to another to turn
it. But as long as the city is willing to give you compost, I'd probably
be happy to take it. Though it's sometimes infested with pesticide residues
that can be pretty devastating. One of my buddies from grad school
was the one who initially spotted herbicide damage from compost given to the
community gardens in Pullman: http://www.jgpress.com/BCArticles/2001/070125.html

I've also done a lot of in-situ composting over the years... drag your bootheel
into the soil to make a trench, drop in whatever you've got, and kick a little
soil over it. Next year, the rows go where the trenches were. Lazy gardening
at its finest, though you don't want to dispose of diseased or seed-bearing
materials that way.


Coffee grounds are fairly acidic... if you've got an acid soil, and are heavy
with the coffee grounds, you may actually push the pH too low for your plants.
Moderation in all things, except maybe compost. g

Roses are happiest with a pH of about 6.0 to 6.5.

Kay

****Our soil here is alkaline -- California adobe. But my garden
soil has been modified over the (many) decades by previous owner and
moi, so I think it might be pretty well balanced. One of these days
I''ll get around to testing it g So I don't think coffee grounds
would create an acidic imbalance.

You've got a huge amount of alkaline reserves in your soil, so you may
be just fine pouring on the coffee grounds. Up here in the land of
no soil calcium to speak of, we'd be in trouble. Particularly if
I started dragging home coffee grounds from the local espresso stands that
are all over the place. g

I'd be interested to know how the native soil pH and your garden soil pH
compare now. It's really difficult to push a soil very far from its
native pH and have it hold at the new pH.

======What I ask is whether I have to scratch in or bury the coffee
grounds (and banana peels) or if it's enuff just to strew at the
outside root zone & water in.

Thoughts?

I think you can do what pleases you. While I don't like the smell of
coffee, I don't find the sight of it or decomposing banana peels
abhorrent. Some people do. That's the only real reason to bury, imho,
unless you're doing something strange like the volcano mulching that was
common around here a few years ago.