Home |
Search |
Today's Posts |
#12
|
|||
|
|||
Banana peels and Coffee grounds on roses
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. |
Thread Tools | Search this Thread |
Display Modes | |
|
|
Similar Threads | ||||
Thread | Forum | |||
Banana peels | Gardening | |||
coffee grounds and rabbits | Gardening | |||
blue hydrangeas and coffee grounds | Gardening | |||
coffee grounds from cold press coffee | Roses | |||
Q: Worms and Coffee Grounds | Gardening |