This week I wanted to share 5 Kitchen to Garden tips, cheap and easy to help your garden be more productive and bloom.
Egg Shells
Dried and crushed egg shells, I dry mine in the bottom oven of the Rayburn but you could pop them in the bottom of the oven when you have finished cooking, I crush them up and keep in a container, they then get worked into the soil were tomatoes and peppers grow, the calcium released by the shells helps fend off blossom end rot, leaving some on the surface of compost can help deter slugs and snails too.
Banana Skins
Banana skins chopped up and buried near the roots of roses and sweet peas, the peels potassium will give the plant a nutritional boost and help the resist disease.
Citrus Peel
Any citrus peel, Oranges, Lemons, Limes or Satsumas, scatter these on your borders and beds were you have freshly dug soil or just sown seeds, the smell deters cats from using it as a toilet, you have to keep adding fresh peel as the smell dissipates after a few days or rain.
Coffee Grounds
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| picture courtesy of google |
Spent coffee grounds are great scattered around lime hating plants, such as blueberries, azaleas, rhododendrons, the grounds are rich in nitrogen which helps plants covert sunlight to energy and lower the PH of the soil, if you are not a coffee household, those fancy coffee shops often give the spent grounds away free just pop in and ask.
Tea Bags
Something I have a lot of tea bags as I am a tea drinker, tea needs to be broken open and the spent tea tipped out, dig it in around plants, it will help nourish the plants and help retain moisture, you can just put the tea-bags down complete and then over time pick out the bags, spent tea is very good at encouraging earth worms.
Many thanks to Amy for running the five on Friday, you can pop over to her blog from the link on the side bar and visit others who are taking part.
The egg shells is such a great tip! We have just dug a very small veg patch for my son to look after and we will be growing tomatoes, so this is a brilliant tip for us. Thank you! I'm looking forward to spending some time over the weekend reding your blog, it looks lovely.
ReplyDeleteI hope his veggies do well and it encourages him to go onto other things :-)
DeleteSome really good tips there but as its all food waste i would worry about vermin as my friend has had to stop producing her own compost for this reason , Mind you she does back on to a disused railway so maybe that has something to do with it xxx
ReplyDeleteI cant say I have had a rat issue with these everything gets dug into the soil except the citrus peel. :-)
DeleteAll great tips Dawn, thank you for sharing! Congratulions on winning the pepper giveaway!! xx
ReplyDeleteThank you I will pop over later and have a look what to do :-)
DeleteI've used the tea-bag and egg shells for a while now. Havent tried the orange or banana skins yeet.
ReplyDeleteI wish you would post about how you grow (and keep alive!) your citrus fruit, I would like to try that.
If you have already can you provide a link 'cos I can't find any info.
Thanks
very easy dont pot on to soon using John Innes No2 , they need winter protection, mine stay in an unheated greenhouse in winter I dont cover them with anything, when the clocks change in spring they move on to a summer citrus feed and with the clock change in Autumn they go on to a winter feed, only use rain water never tap water, they can stand out when all risk of frost has gone, water when the soil has dried out, I stand mine on trays with clay pebbles and water into that, thats all I do :-)
DeleteGood tips Dawn.....we've just recently started saving our eggshells (rather than putting them on the compost heap) for our tomatoes, having read it somewhere else. Perhaps we should be saving teabags and coffee too!
ReplyDeleteI do also feed the crushed shells back to the chooks, :-)
DeleteThis is brilliant - thank you! I am going to use all of these tips! x
ReplyDeleteI hope you get on well with them :-)
DeleteThank you for the tips, I'll have to give them a try!
ReplyDeleteyour welcome :-)
DeleteThis is just a brilliant post, knew a couple but not the others, literally can take these tips straight from your post and use them. so practical, easy and brilliant. THANK YOU
ReplyDeleteyour welcome :-)
DeleteDo you have to dry egg shells? I will try when I move from the spriuting cobtainers to big pots.
ReplyDeleteyes it is best to dry the egg shells, pop them in the bottom of the oven or grill when you have been using it or if you have somewere really warm leave them there, they crumble a lot easier when dry, I use a potato masher to crush mine as they can be a bit sharp :-)
DeleteGreat tips Dawn, thank you for sharing them it is always good to find new ways of recycling things isn't it. Thank you so much as always for joining in. I hope that you have a great weekend! xx
ReplyDeleteI haven't planted my sweet peas out yet, I shall certainly be adding chopped up banana peel to the holes now. Thanks x
ReplyDeleteI knew most ot those, but have never tried some, maybe I should, thanks for the post.
ReplyDeleteThese are great tips you have shared today. I have used the egg shells before to deter the snails in my garden. But, I'm going to try the tea bags. Fascinating idea. Wishing you a wonderful weekend, Pat :)
ReplyDeleteBrilliant tips - thanks :)
ReplyDeleteVery handy info!
ReplyDeleteI've been doing my coffee grounds for a long time but never thought of doing tea bags. Training hubby to keep the spent teabags may be more challenging.
ReplyDeleteWhat fantastic ideas. I would use citrus to try and keep cats away but it always seems to rain here. X
ReplyDeleteGood tips there. I'm not a coffee drinker but Mick used to use a cafetiere so I'd mulch the blueberries with the grounds. He now uses coffee pods so there's nothing for me to use any more but I did pick up a bag full of coffee grounds which a coffee shop was giving away recently. I've just been catching up on your news, how wonderful that Flash returned home, I wonder where he's been all this time. We used to have tortoises when I was young but they always escaped and they never came back. Not such good news about Kara, lovely doggy. I'm sure you're doing everything possible to make the time she has left happy and comfortable.
ReplyDeleteSuch clever tips, I am going to have a go with all of them. Thank you for sharing, have a great weekend.
ReplyDelete