I save coffee grounds from OP (along with my tea leaves) for roses and other decorative plants. He says banana peels are also good for roses.
Trying to save myself misdirected effort, what is NG opinion:
Need to scratch in and water coffee grounds? Or bury? Or just leave on surface?
When apply -- in rose's annual cycle.
Need to cut up or grind up banana peels? Same q. as above.
Same q, re: when apply.
TIA for opinion(s)
HB
Yes, Hypatia , glad to help. You can use as mulch. The only reason to bury it would be to jump-start very bad soil for a garden. Usually, you will bury nitrogen sources, because the proteins breakdown releasing ammonia, which is a gas that will dissolve into water.
Ideally, just before it pushes in the spring, when it will need the nutrients the most. But they aren't like nitrogen, that will encourage plants to waste energy pushing green foliage while they should be resting. Or do your's bloom all year round in Santa Monica?
Only if your in a rush.
Anytime. Their nutrients aren't going anywhere, unless aided by a squirrel, or a bird.
Nichts zu danken.
***They might if left on their own, but would soon become disorderly. We prune here in "winter". I key the job to my birthday in late January. [...]
Thanks
HB
Toss 'em in the compost heap; add compost whenever you've got some and it's the growing season.
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.
Roses are happiest with a pH of about 6.0 to 6.5.
Kay
Sensei, I have lost young annual plants (squash) after mulching them with coffee grounds, but I have a web site that says that coffee grounds aren't acidic, at least not significantly (6.5 and 6.8).
Caveat:
This site says that coffee grounds are about 2% nitrogen, but that seems too low to burn plants.
In any event, don't perennial plants (such as roses) prefer soil on the (fungal) acidic side, and vegetables (annuals) prefer basic (bacterial) soils?
That said, wouldn't it be as beneficial to mulch perennials with the grounds and bananas, and to top with straw to avoid decorative, esthetic problems?
***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! ****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 So I don't think coffee grounds would create an acidic imbalance.
=3D=3D=3D=3D=3D=3DWhat I ask is whether I have to scratch in or bury the co= ffee grounds (and banana peels) or if it's enuff just to strew at the outside root zone & water in.
Thoughts?
HB
[...]
Perhaps, but I don't want to bother finding a straw source & dealing with possible imported seeds.
Would small size ground cover mulch do as well? I buy bags & bags of it and use along my rose paths as well as other decorative planting areas to conserve water and discourage weeds (hah!).
HB
Most likely caffeine, which is a germination and growth inhibitor.
That's pretty light, especially when it's not in free form.
Nope.
Kay
Composter??? 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:
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.
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.
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.
As with all organic matter coffee grounds need to be composted prior to adding to the soil. Most books on composting explain not to compost banana skins, like corn cobs/husks they won't compost for many years, and then they add very little. Placing uncomposted garbage on or in your garden soil will only attract vermin and harbor all manner of plant diseases. If you are looking for a compost shortcut/work around other than obtaining already composted material there is none.
Mulch and compost are very different, they're actually opposites, mulch deters plant growth and compost encourages plant growth. Most organic commercial mulch (like shredded barks) will over several years eventually break down but adds very little by way of nutrients to soil... and when mixed into the soil will cause all kinds of problems, mostly because when smothered with soil it won't break down so will harbor diseases. One year my neighbor shredded mountains of fallen leaves and tilled them into his vegetable garden without composting them first, his garden suffered terribly by an onslought of insects in all their various stages and all kinds of diseases and molds, not to mention the burrowing varmits that subsist on the insects and alos devour the plant roots. You have a choice, gardening or landfill, that's it.
Thanks for the feed back.
Oak leaves would do as well. I like to use alfalfa (lucern to our anti-podians).
The region is semi-arid. I remember patches of alkali between Westminster, and Seal Beach when I was a child. Yet, alfalfa, and lima beans were common crops.
Yes, I grok.
I use the mulch to cut down on watering; water is very expensive here. This is the "land of little rain" -- meaning just that. The rainy season (in theory) could run from Nov to March, but in practice, there are few rainy seasons worth a damn. Soil would get dry & parched if not protected. Mulch also supposed to cut down on weeds (rueful chuckle).
The compost, whether my former home-made, or now the City's compost, is used for plant and soil health.
So I don't see how one excludes the other. Compost gets lightly dug into the soil, and is always used, BTW, in my transplant mix. Mulch protects the surface, and also has an aesthetic function.
Brooklyn1 wrote: ...
the skins are easily taken care of, the tougher stem part is what takes more time, but it will eventually break apart into fiberous strands. why is that a problem? a small piece of woody material is not going to cause major disease problems or attract much.
sometimes what you are after with compost is organic material that adds air spaces for a heavy soil like clay. in that case chopped up corn cobs are great. and from my observation (direct and with a written record) it takes less than a year for worms to do the job even on the fiberous stems.
bury it deep enough and these troubles are eliminated.
worms do a great job, chopping and drying stems of lettuces, brocolli, ... and slicing and drying carrot tops, potatoes, other root veggies, drying potato peels before adding them to the mix will make their eventual consumption go much faster than incorporating them fresh.
things like banana peels, melon rinds. apple cores, all good to go in straight up. worms call those frosting...
songbird
I'd be very wary of city compost (it's likely not compost but shredded brush only partially composted). Typically what the towns trim and shred contains damaging organisms and chemical pollutants. Years ago I accepted a 10 cuyd truckload of "compost" from the local utility company, was only partially composted (was free but I had to accept the entire truckload dumped at the foot of my driveway, took me the better part of a week to wheelbarrow it all to my beds before I could use my driveway. The next spring I was inundated with hoards of insects/larvae, and fungus I had never seen before. It may have been free initially but there was a hefty price tag attached. I would never accept plant matter from municipalities again.
If you use the sheet mulching (lasagna) style of gardening, it isn't a problem. It's all good.
IIRC Rodale used trenches about 8" - 10" deep for kitchen waste.
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