During these times when we’re really not supposed to be leaving the house, it’s nice to find alternative uses for things that would otherwise go in the trash. Today, I may be talking about two soil amendments that you probably got laying around the house, possibly ready to throw away. However, both of these things come with strong warnings, so stay tuned.
Now let’s get growing.
Today, we’re going to be talking about using wood ash and coffee grounds in the garden. If you’ve had experience with either one of these, good or bad, let us know down in the comments.
Now, I’ve been using both in my garden for years, and they offer some really great benefits. However, they also come with some serious side effects that may or may not make them good for your garden. So, we’re going to talk about that. Plus, if you stick around to the end, I’m going to show you a really cool, fun test to see what the pH is in your garden soil, and you don’t have to go out and buy anything. Okay, let’s get started.
**Benefits of Coffee Grounds**
Coffee grounds – now, if you’ve been to Starbucks lately (well, probably not lately, but in the recent past), then you’ve probably seen a bucket of bagged used coffee grounds near the door. If you didn’t grab that bag and run, then you probably aren’t aware of the benefits that coffee grounds provide to your garden soil.
Now, they’re not really a strong fertilizer, coming in with an NPK of nitrogen 2.1, phosphorous 0.3, and potassium 0.3. Plus, the nitrogen doesn’t break down in the soil for a while, so it’s not immediately available to your plants. But it does offer some really great trace elements, such as magnesium, copper, calcium, manganese, zinc, and iron.
Plus, they’re a really good source of organic matter that worms absolutely love, and they’re really beneficial to the microorganisms that live in your soil. However, to apply it, you don’t want to mix it in with the soil because when you do, the microorganisms are working to break it down, and it’s actually taking nitrogen from your soil for that process.
Another reason you don’t want to dig it into the soil is if there’s any caffeine left in it. Caffeine can stunt your plant’s growth as well.
**Dangers of Caffeine**
Speaking of caffeine, if you’ve got pets like Boomer here that tend to eat the soil in your garden (you’re weird), then you want to make sure that you sprinkle the coffee grounds in an area where the dogs or other pets can’t get to because caffeine is detrimental to their health. At least until it’s had a few waterings to leach some of that caffeine out.
Now, one myth out there that you might have heard of is that coffee grounds, when you add them to your garden, it actually will increase the acidity of the soil. That’s actually not true. Unless it is unroasted coffee grounds, once it’s brewed, the acid in the coffee grounds is actually in your cup of coffee, and it leaves the grounds themselves pretty much pH neutral. So it’s not going to raise the acidity around your plants. Now, if you want to raise the acidity around certain plants like azaleas or blueberries, then you can sprinkle some unused, fresh coffee grounds around those. But otherwise, it’s not going to make much difference in your soil pH.
So just in case I haven’t balanced out the positives with the negatives, I have one more negative for you. But before I tell you that, just know that I’m going to give you a way to negate all the negatives, keep the positives, and be able to use coffee grounds in your garden no matter what.
**Wood Ash**
Alright, onto our second subject, and that is wood ash. Here in the northern hemisphere, we are coming to the end (some places it is the end) of the cold season, and your fireplace might be piling up with ash. So it can be ashes from a fireplace or wood-burning stove, or if you have a fire pit, what you’re left with after a fire is ash.
There’s two or three things in this debris. Biochar is the white, extremely fine material in addition to the extremely light-weight wood fragments. Ash contains both of these ingredients, which are extremely beneficial to your garden, particularly for growing food.
Wood ash has a NPK of 0-1-3, indicating a high potash or potassium content. Presently, potassium or potash is truly significant for any of us developing food since it really builds the size and nature of the products of the soil that we are developing.
Presently, similar to I said, the dark remaining parts in here, little lumps are biochar, and there’s really a method for making a lot of top notch biochar on its own in your chimney.
Biochar is a phenomenal element for the nursery on the grounds that, infinitesimally, it is exceptionally intricate with pores, and it has a lot of surface region. As a matter of fact, a solitary gram is remembered to have the surface area of 1,000 square yards. So it gives a ton of surface region and little openings and little hiding spots for a lot of microorganisms and organisms to live to have the option to assist with handling those micronutrients in your dirt and increment the retention of the supplements too.
Presently, everything that being expressed, you can’t utilize this straightforwardly into my nursery on the grounds that, dissimilar to espresso beans, wood debris can decisively affect your dirt’s pH. Furthermore, on the off chance that you have a basic soil as I do, it will make it more soluble.
In the event that you don’t have any idea what pH your dirt is, there are ways of making it happen, however one way I will show you just after this. You don’t have to spend money on fancy tests or gadgets. As a matter of fact, everything you want, which is like three, are presumably in your kitchen at this moment. So remain tuned only two or three seconds longer, and I will go through that cycle. It’s truly basic and it’s good times.
So in the event that you figure out you have acidic soil, wood debris is perfect for you on the grounds that not exclusively are you going to get every one of the advantages that I was discussing straightforwardly into the dirt, it will truly bring your pH into a level that is more nonpartisan, which the vast majority of the leafy foods we love truly like.
And another plus is the nitrogen in the wood ash has been completely burned up, so it’s not gonna rob from the soil like the coffee grounds will. So you can mix it right in, you can sprinkle it on, either way, it would be fine.
One word of warning though, if you have blueberries growing in your garden, they like acid. Do not put this anywhere near the blueberries. I would also keep it away from your tomato plants because while they don’t like as much acid as blueberries, they do like their soil a little bit on the acidic side, acidic to neutral. But just keep it away from both of those two, and you should be fine. For the rest of us, add it to your compost. It’s a great addition because it’s gonna do all the benefits that we talked about, but it’s also getting that biochar, which is going to give lots more space for all those good bugs in your compost heap to hang out while they’re turning your precious yard waste into even more precious beautiful black compost.
Now, just a quick note on what types of wood not to use for your wood ash. It would be black walnut wood, which has an ingredient that’s harmful to plants, any wood that’s been painted or treated, and then you don’t want to use like the charcoal briquettes that you get for your barbecue.
**pH Test**
Soil pH in specific areas don’t really change that often from month to month or even year to year, so buying a gadget to me is just kind of a waste. So what I’m gonna do right now is a simple, fun test. It’s not going to give you an exact number, but it’s going to give you a pretty good approximation, and in my opinion, that’s all I really need.
First, you need to take a soil sample, and it’s good to get a little bit from different areas in your garden so you kind of get an overall view instead of, you know, maybe something actually in this area was making one part of it a certain way.
You’re gonna split that soil sample into two jars or any kind of container works, but I’m using clear for presentation purposes. Now, we need three more ingredients: a bottle of water (and we’re using bottled water because bottled water is pH neutral unless it’s marketed as an alkaline water. Don’t use that), and vinegar, and it can be white vinegar, which is the cheapest kind. I’m assuming apple cider would be the same, but this is our acid, and we’re using baking soda for the opposite end of the pH spectrum.
The first thing we’re gonna do is we’re going to add water just above the level of the soil in each one of the jars and stir them around a little bit.
Okay, now here’s where it gets fun. This is where you might want to grab a kid.
So we’re gonna start with the acid first. Now, if you have an acid soil, there is nothing for this solution, the acid solution, to react with. So it’s pretty much gonna do nothing. If you have an alkaline soil, it’s going to start to bubble and fizz because it’s reacting to the opposite pH in the jar. So you want some of this in there. So do we have bubbles? Can you hear any fizzing? Yeah, and it’s bubbling a little bit too.
So if you have a little fizz like we do, that means you’ve got soil that is more on the alkaline side. Now, if you have a lot of fizz, that means your soil is really far to the alkaline side. So this is a little bit closer to neutral.
Alkaline. Alright, you ready to try this one?
Alright, so now we’re gonna add the baking soda. Alright.
Is it fizzing? Yes, it is. Not the same as the other, right? Yeah, so we’ve got about the same fizz in both. So what does that tell you? That tells you it’s probably pH neutral, right in the middle, because we didn’t get a huge strong reaction either way.
Now, if you’ve got a kid like me or you’re a big kid yourself, it might be fun to mix the two.
Yeah, alright, pour this one into this one.
That’s so cool.
It looks like coke.
It does. It’s kind of like when you shake up a coke bottle and then when you like open it and all like yeah.
