Thursday, 30 April 2015

Five On Friday

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
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.

28 comments:

  1. 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.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I hope his veggies do well and it encourages him to go onto other things :-)

      Delete
  2. Some 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

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I cant say I have had a rat issue with these everything gets dug into the soil except the citrus peel. :-)

      Delete
  3. All great tips Dawn, thank you for sharing! Congratulions on winning the pepper giveaway!! xx

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you I will pop over later and have a look what to do :-)

      Delete
  4. I've used the tea-bag and egg shells for a while now. Havent tried the orange or banana skins yeet.
    I 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

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. 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 :-)

      Delete
  5. Good 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!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I do also feed the crushed shells back to the chooks, :-)

      Delete
  6. This is brilliant - thank you! I am going to use all of these tips! x

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I hope you get on well with them :-)

      Delete
  7. Thank you for the tips, I'll have to give them a try!

    ReplyDelete
  8. This 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

    ReplyDelete
  9. Do you have to dry egg shells? I will try when I move from the spriuting cobtainers to big pots.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. yes 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 :-)

      Delete
  10. Great 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

    ReplyDelete
  11. I haven't planted my sweet peas out yet, I shall certainly be adding chopped up banana peel to the holes now. Thanks x

    ReplyDelete
  12. I knew most ot those, but have never tried some, maybe I should, thanks for the post.

    ReplyDelete
  13. These 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 :)

    ReplyDelete
  14. I'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.

    ReplyDelete
  15. What fantastic ideas. I would use citrus to try and keep cats away but it always seems to rain here. X

    ReplyDelete
  16. Good 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.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Such clever tips, I am going to have a go with all of them. Thank you for sharing, have a great weekend.

    ReplyDelete

Thank you for taking the time and leaving a comment I do appreciate it, I may not always answer comments but I do read them all.