The local Starbucks has taken to packaging its used coffee grounds in 5-pound, waterproof bags and leaving a barrel full of them by the door "for our customers' gardens". I love freebies, so midway through garaging I grabbed a bag and took it home with my garage/estate sale finds. Now what? Do I dump it around plants as it is or do I need to start a compost heap (in this 100+, 98 percent humidity weather the thought makes me cringe.) zemedelec
Go ahead, dump it, rake it in. It smells wonderful whenever you walk by. A bit of warning though, I find whenever I pick up spent coffee grounds at the end of a hot day, there are already maggots in them -- small ones. If that seems creepy then wear gloves or use tools to handle. The maggots are harmless to plants.
You can scatter the grounds around any acid loving plant - hydrangeas, camellias, rhodies or azaleas - in fact, pretty much any broadleaf evergreen shrub will benefit from them. If scattering directly, I wouldn't overdo. A couple times a season is sufficient.
You could always start that compost pile once the weather cools a bit.
pam - gardengal
You would have done well to know our friend to help you with your house. The fellow who was shot at Jazz Fest was our very good friend. He lived around the block from us, and we shared interests in old cajun carpentry. Perry
subtropical
And helpful in the normally agonizing debridement of badly healing wounds. That's right, folks--the old wives had some excellent remedies (if repellent to modern tastes.) Maggots only eat DEAD flesh--so the doctors who keep up on their medical reading are bringing them back, all laboratory bred and sterile, of course, when a wound won't heal or shows signs of going gangrenous. And of course you all have heard about the new/old use of leeches in microsurgery. Nasty looking creatures, but I'd rather feed a few leeches than lose a severed finger to the tiny blood vessels clotting up. The leeches' saliva keeps them from doing that.
Oops. We were talking about gardening, weren't we?! zemedelec
That seemed like such a senseless, repellent crime. I didn't know the guy, but...
About the carpentry--I wonder. This is, theoretically, the "American sector". Would they have had Cajun workers in 1880? One piece of the house--an elaborate iron fire surround I found broken in 3 pieces at The Green Project's new digs (they seem to have a much higher quality and more unusual stuff, plus more than fair prices--is Creole and antebellum, or so said the guy who soldered it together for me, almost invisibly. He owns that place on Tchoupitoulas where a giant iron Praying Mantis, twice as tall as I am, held pride of place a couple of months ago--his own work. Said the Creoles liked their mantels even fancier than the Americans, so the raised decorations were copper, though covered in black paint. Since the room is colorful enough as is (olive green, dull pink and beige tiles around the fireplace, white woodwork and the previous inhabitants, Robert Shakespeare and family, painted the walls rose pink, matching patterned curtains that hide the AC outside) I left it black.
Leslie zemedelec
Thank you all for your input--especially the info about the maggots. Yes, it is indeed maggot weather. I'll never forget living in Beirut before the civil war damaged that lovely Levantine city and finding my steak, left in a sort of pie safe, had "grown" maggots overnight. Ugh. The next month (I was living on a tiny local reporters' salary) I found a second hand mini fridge. zemedelec
I gather that it's a good slug barrier - and apparently cats dislike it.
cheers!
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