Re: CULT: COFFEE GROUNDS
- To: Multiple recipients of list <i*@rt66.com>
- Subject: Re: CULT: COFFEE GROUNDS
- From: s*@aristotle.net (J. Michael, Celia or Ben Storey)
- Date: Tue, 27 May 1997 17:02:08 -0600 (MDT)
>do any of you use coffee grounds for iris fertilizer?
Rima, hi! I dump coffee grounds in my compost after a bad experience with
it molding when I tried to use it as-is around bedding annuals. In the
compost it seems to be an earthworm magnet. The biggest, fattest worms
you've ever seen came to live in my compost as soon as I started dumping in
the coffee grounds.
According to my little Sudbury reference booklet, coffee grounds are
supposed to convey nutrients in this proportion:
2-0.3-0.5, so that's more nitrogen than phosporus or potash (or should I
say more nitrogen carriers?). It's a higher nitrogen percentage than you
would get from cow manure (0.6-0.2-0.5) or horse manure (0.7-0.3-0.6). And
you know the teaching on manure. Unless your soil is nitrogen-deficient, I
don't know why you'd want to add this kind of fertilizer to a TB iris bed.
In Arkansas, it would be like begging for rot.
Some of the folks who grow a lot of other species here do use manure in
their beds, but my experience with LAs and JAs and SIBs is too limited to
be of use to you in that regard.
celia
storey@aristotle.net
Little Rock, Arkansas
USDA Zone 7b, under tornado watch. Heavy storms Monday night blew down a
25-year-old redbud, missing the house and saving me the trouble of
excavating. :-)
