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Any organic substances will enrich your soil, but these things take at least a year or longer to break down enough to affect the soil nutrients.
In the meantime, they repel pests. We used to get aphid infestations that made garden broccoli and cauliflower inedible (the bugs simply could not be washed out). Last year after regularly sprinkling coffee grounds on and around the plants, they had no aphids on them at all.
I live in Washington state near the western canadian border. Is it ok to put my staghorn fern outside?
The front of my house faces northwest, when to put out and when to bring in for winter?
Thank you
Karend54
In mid to late spring in the PNW you can put the staghorn out when the night time temperatures are consistently staying above 65 degrees. Make extra sure the medium you have it in always stays humidified and evenly damp when it's outside, remembering that the air circulation outdoors is always a lot stronger than it is indoors and the medium may dry out much more quickly in outdoor breezes than it would indoors.
Don't put it in a location outdoors where it gets direct full sunlight, staghorns need indirect bright light to dappled semi-shade.
When it starts getting on towards late summer-early autumn monitor the evening temperatures carefully and bring it back indoors for the autumn/winter season when the night time temperatures are getting around or just below 70 degrees. Don't let the plant get below 65 degrees when it's outside. Staghorns can temporarily withstand temps down to 60 degrees for one or two nights outdoors but it's recommended to not allow that to happen. It's not like being at 60 when it's sheltered indoors with no wind, and wind chill is not good for them, the cool temperature shocks them and makes them weak, saggy, limp and susceptible to root rot. So play it safe and bring the plant indoors once the night time temps start getting at or below 70.
It also depends on the species of staghorn, I have a couple, one in a kanuka tree and the other on a silver tree fern, and there are about 40 freezing nights a year here.
I used to throw coffee grounds on my gardens all the time, along with lots of cinnamon....snails and other critters hate cinnamon, and I just bought the kind that was a dollar at walmart, and sprinkled it on maybe twice a month.
The coffee grounds I pulled out of the used k-cups and saved them in a container then sprinkled them on...
Don’t go crazy with the applications of coffee grounds .
There are issues.
First, due to small particle size of coffee grounds it could impede water and air gas exchange if applied as mulch and too thick.
Second, the biochemical composition of coffee may/will impede the plant growth, earthworms, etc
“Studies indicated that polyphenols, caffeine, and tannins in SCGs {Spent Coffee Grounds} are possible causes of plant growth inhibition (Hardgrove and Livesley, 2016). SCG application (1% wt) can improve soil enzymatic activity but can also cause oxidative stress to earth worms at a higher (5%) percentage (Sanchez-Hernandez et al., 2019). The phytotoxicity can be reduced by composting, vermicomposting, or thermal treatment, etc. to reduce these compounds (Cervera-Mata et al., 2020), and the reduction of polyphenol resulted in more biomass accumulation.”
Some plants are very sensitive to caffeine and seems to be greatly affected if coffee grounds applied directly to soil.
The best way to use spent grounds is to compost them first for at least 6? months as the researches are still trying to work out details on the best way to use grounds overall and in agriculture in particular.
Additional topic is pesticides residue - which is very difficult to investigate and detect due to a biochemical complexity of coffee as well as a lack of testing methodology (has to be designed for specific pesticide;very complex )
Don’t go crazy with the applications of coffee grounds .
There are issues.
First, due to small particle size of coffee grounds it could impede water and air gas exchange if applied as mulch and too thick.
Second, the biochemical composition of coffee may/will impede the plant growth, earthworms, etc
“Studies indicated that polyphenols, caffeine, and tannins in SCGs {Spent Coffee Grounds} are possible causes of plant growth inhibition (Hardgrove and Livesley, 2016). SCG application (1% wt) can improve soil enzymatic activity but can also cause oxidative stress to earth worms at a higher (5%) percentage (Sanchez-Hernandez et al., 2019). The phytotoxicity can be reduced by composting, vermicomposting, or thermal treatment, etc. to reduce these compounds (Cervera-Mata et al., 2020), and the reduction of polyphenol resulted in more biomass accumulation.”
Some plants are very sensitive to caffeine and seems to be greatly affected if coffee grounds applied directly to soil.
The best way to use spent grounds is to compost them first for at least 6? months as the researches are still trying to work out details on the best way to use grounds overall and in agriculture in particular.
Additional topic is pesticides residue - which is very difficult to investigate and detect due to a biochemical complexity of coffee as well as a lack of testing methodology (has to be designed for specific pesticide;very complex )
well, I will say this, once I started putting coffee grounds on our gardens, as well as some compost items, we had more worms, and over the years, they multiplied, which is great for the garden, hence worm castings...? I mean, our garden's soil was incredible....I actually used to scrap the grounds out of the K-cups into a bowl and when full take them outside and sprinkle them onto the garden as well as ground up egg shells....
OP your question is not dumb, I was just wondering the same thing myself the other day as someone who saves our used coffee grounds and dumps them in a large flower pot on the patio. I usually wait until the pot is way full then take a large scoop of some kind and scatter them at the base of whichever plant. I’ve been doing this with mulched areas and wondering the same thing as you..guess we’ll have to wait and see
I have a 6 qt. rectangular container with a lid that I got at the Dollar store in my kitchen and I put coffee grounds, used loose tea and the tea from teabags, crumpled egg shells, and peelings from vegetables into the container. I keep the lid on it but I do stir it up just about every day and occasionally leave the lid off for a few hours so nothing gets moldy.
By the time the container is nearly full (two weeks), the mixture smells wonderfully rich and earthy. I put it around my veggie plants, roses, shrubs, everything!
That's a really good idea. You could go one step further and add tap water and let it set for a a day or two and then drain off the water to use for watering house plants.
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