CONTAINER GARDENING TIP OF THE DAY

Here is another Saturday-that-turned-into-Sunday-before-everything-Saturday-had-been-done tip!

Add coffee grounds to enhance your soil. I have written about the use of coffee grounds in containers in an article previously published on this website under soil management, so this tip is just a reminder, and a very short one at that. Please, wander around the site and do some extra reading on the subject. Anyway.

If you drink filtre-coffee and land up with coffee grounds that you would more usually throw away, don’t, add them to your soil. How much? Well just use your common sense … I have never tried to grow anything in only coffee grounds but just put enough in your pots that makes sense to you. The addition can attract earthworms (good), deter some pests (good) and can give your soil an acidic boost for plants like maidenhair ferns, azaleas or blueberries (also good). The earthworms will come of course if your pots happen to be bottomless and ‘contained’ in the ground. We can talk about bottomless containers another time if you like.

If you have too much coffee for the number of pots you have, share with the neighbour and all, not everyone has access to this valuable resource … instant coffee drinkers for example.

By the way, you can do this only with used coffee … ground coffee from a packet or unground or whole beans will not work. I had a conversation with my ferns the other days and they told me they liked an Arabica blend best. Go figure!


Lestie Mulholland
Container Gardening Editor

Contain your Delight - it's easy!