Don't you love peels?
Their fault, I fear
I thought that you'd want what I want -
Not more weeds and tears
But where are the peels?
Quick, ship in the peels
Don't bother, they're here.
Someone photographed his new rose garden for Facebook, so I added a comment on using Peat Humus on each bush.
He responded, "I am using banana peels, egg shells, and..."
I answered that Peat Humus is $1.88 a bag.
Gardening by hearsay is usually not dangerous, but it is seldom valuable. People who read almost nothing in the field will pass on such nuggets as "birds will to death when we go on vacation, because they depend on our feeders!" Of course - no one should doubt the infinite value of egg shells and banana peels.
Egg shells do nothing for the soil, but the birds might use fragments. Banana peels contribute a tiny amount of organic matter, but they do not hurt. My objection is their $50 a pound price. Yes! The first one eaten is green. The second one is good. The third one is beery tasting and starting to go. Banana bread time slips away and the rotten leftovers, dripping banana ichor and surrounded by tiny flies, are carried gingerly to the garden.
In contrast, coffee grounds are easily tossed on a daily basis. After 10 years here, we have added 3,650+ packets of grounds and the paper filters to the garden. They rest around the plants as mulch until wood mulch is added over them.
Wise gardeners with generous coffee shop managers will take pounds of coffee grounds home to the garden.
"In addition, each cubic yard of coffee grounds provides 10 pounds of nitrogen (0.09% available). The grounds will provide nitrogen in a slow release fashion for use by plants over the long term. It is an excellent soil amendment and is recommended to be used at a rate of 25 to 35% by volume to improve soil structure."
Agricultural scientists used to make fun of organic additions, but they were clueless about the role of fungus connecting and feeding all plants. Plants give fungus tidbits of carbon in exchange for hydration and minerals.
The goal should be to provide as much carbon to the soil, in various forms, using common sense. This all seems planned somehow, as if all of nature was created, engineered, and managed by a super-intelligent source. And I don't mean The New York Times.
