Posted on 04 August 2008 by urbangardencasual.com
What Are Your Plants Eating?
By Cinday Naas
What did you feed your tomatoes today?
How about your corn? Did you remember to give your rhododendron a nice cup of tea?
There are things you eat and drink every day which are really good for using in your garden.
Here are some tips to feed your garden as well as perhaps reducing the amount of trash you throw away, too.
- Eggshells: These are good for enriching the soil near tomatoes. Crush them by hand, or whirl them in a blender with a little water, and pour over the soil under the tomato plants. The extra calcium will help to keep the soil rich for years to come.
- Coffee grounds and tea leaves - acid-loving plants, such as rhododendrons and azaleas love to be treated to coffee or tea occasionally. I spread the coffee grounds from my cafetiere under the rhododendron, and the leaves on this plant look wonderfully healthy even though I don’t use commercially prepared acid-loving fertilizer. Many plants love the leftovers in your tea or coffee pot, too. Occasionally I will water the tomatoes with leftover brewed tea.
- Fruit peels- I don’t have a composter, but I do add some kinds of fruit parings to the soil around my plants. Adding various types of peels adds important nutrients into the soil. In the fall, I dig the bits which are left down into the soil and there are no large pieces left by spring.
- Aquarium water- we have a fish tank with three large goldfish. Their water gets messy fairly frequently, and by using the water I drain out to keep the tank clean, I give my plants a big boost. The water is great for watering veggies and herbs, too.
- Cooking water from veggies- the leftover water from boiling potatoes or from steaming veggies is great for watering the garden. You’ll use water which would otherwise be tossed down the drain, and the water contains some nutrients, too.
What do you use in your garden which would otherwise be thrown away?
There are so many ways to reduce the trash we leave at the curbside while improving our gardens, and I would love to hear some of your tips.
August 4th, 2008 at 3:14 am
Using the water from steamed vegetables is an interesting, easy to do idea. Is there any downside? Are there are any plants that react negatively to certain vitamins that might be left in the water?
August 5th, 2008 at 11:42 am
Just wondering, what’s your feeling on pasta water? I salt mine pretty well (though certainly not as much as lore says you should - ocean water is too salty for my taste), so I could see that as a potential problem.
August 6th, 2008 at 8:58 am
Matt, I don’t use pasta water because of the salt issue. Salt buildup in the soil is a problem, especially for plants grown in containers. I would not recommend using this water.
Fern, as long as you don’t salt the steaming water, there are no problems in using the veggie water. If you steam using only water and do not add salt, lemon juice, wine, etc., your plants will love this.