Adventures in gardening: coffee grounds into ground

Be careful when taking the top off the K-cup.

     I’ve mentioned before how I’ve been doing a bit of composting to help keep my soil healthy. I’m not hardcore committed to composting seeing as I’m sticking to eggshells and coffee grounds only. Because it’s easiest to show, I wanted to give the breakdown of using coffee grounds.

     First you need to make some coffee. This may seem obvious but the grounds must be used rather than fresh out of the can. If you use a regular 12-cup coffee brewer, your life will be made easier during this process. If you are like me and use a Keurig brewer or any other single cup brewer then things will get tedious. Remember: this is for the good of your plants so don’t give up.

The dried grounds right before going into the garden.

     The second step can be done while you’re brewing your java. Get a small pan, I used an eight-inch round cake pan, and line it with aluminum foil.  Simple enough.

     The third step is up to you on how you do this. For those with the easy 12-cup brewer, just wait for the grounds to cool off a bit then dump the grounds, sans the filter, into the aluminum foil covered pan.

      For those of you with a single-cup brewer, this is where things start to suck. Like with the 12-cup brewer, let the small cup with the grounds cool a bit so you don’t scorch yourself. After, you have to take a knife, don’t use a butter knife or you’re more of a risk to your counters, and cut the top of the cup containing the grounds. Because I use K-cups, I pierce along the edge and circle my way around until the top comes right off. Then just dump the grounds into the pan. The not so great part is usually the grounds get stuck in the small cup so just use your knife to scrape the bottom and sides.

     One thing worth noting about using single-cup brewers is it may be worth it to let a few cups pile up before you empty them. Believe it or not, there is a surprising amount of grounds in one K-cup so five or six will give you enough grounds for a garden the size of mine.

     The fourth step is preheating your oven to 250 degrees Fahrenheit. It may seem weird but you have to dry the grounds out before putting them to work in your garden.

     The fifth thing is baking them for 15-20 minutes. If you have a good layer of grounds then you might want to leave them in for a bit longer and if you have a small amount then keep them in for less time. Once they’re done, let them cool for at least a half hour.

     The final step in the process is sprinkling the grounds into your garden. I’m not saying hold a handful over top of the plants and sprinkle the ground like Parmesan over spaghetti. Hold your hand down close to the soil and spread it around.

     See? Not so bad or complicated. For me, it’s something I do once a week or every other week when I have the time, and brainpower to remember what I was doing, and I feel like it’s helped with keeping my soil and plants healthy.

Adventures in gardening: reflecting on efficiency and poor decisions

     My garden is borderline out of control.

     I’m not saying I’m not proud of the little raised bed box garden but I am slowly becoming intimidated by its’ size. In previous posts I’ve mentioned feeding, watering and composting as a way to keep the garden healthy and thriving.

     It’s thriving all right.

Things have gotten a bit out of hand.

     Coffee grounds, eggshells and Miracle Grow along with the garden hose have acted like an IV by providing nutrients galore to my bunching onions, chives, garlic, sage, basil and tomato plants. I’ve watched these little guys go from nursery school (see what I did there?) to out of control but delicious in a month’s time.

     As stated before, I’ve cut some of my basil to make basil infused olive oil, which will be done next week. A recent development is my chives and green onions are amazing. One of the coolest feelings is deciding you want to throw something extra into a dish and all you have to do is walk outside with a pair of scissors to cut some herbs from your garden. If there is one reason why a home garden is a good idea it is to have the satisfaction of changing a recipe on a whim because you suddenly want some chives in your mashed potatoes, much like I did the other night. Another fun thing was when I made coq au vin for the first time and instead of buying green onions while at the store I just wiggled some out of my garden.

Some of the roma tomatoes. Please note: I had to
lift some branches/leaves and bend down to find these.

     I feel so earth friendly and kitchen efficient.

     So let’s take a moment to talk about the poor decisions. As you can tell from my photos, my tomato plants are the definition of thriving. I have a rather large tomato, which is a bit bigger than a baseball, surrounded by a few more tomatoes on the celebrity plant and have quite a few romas coming in. Here’s the problem: I don’t know how many romas are hanging around because the branches and leaves of the five tomato plants all together have become so entwined I feel like a conquistador tromping through the Amazon. I know of at least six romas but there are so many blossoms in hidden places so I may have to wait for the tomatoes to turn red before I find them. The issue with waiting to spy them due to the color change is I don’t want them to start rotting on the vine because they’ve been left too long.

The huge celebrity tomato next to some of its' kin.

     The other poor decision is my onions. They were labeled as bunching onions and there were three to five of them in each quarter section of the pack. I bought two packs because I happen to love onions and after some research I found out bunching onions was another name for green onions. When I planted them, me being me, I didn’t think much about placing them from the quarter section right to the soil without breaking them up and planting them separately. What I’m admitting to is having three to five onions that should have bee spaced apart right on top of each other a total of eight times. It’s not affecting the growth so much as it’s incredibly difficult to pull the onions from the soil without pulling out a sibling that is still growing. Live and learn.

     Another issue has arisen: the beetles have landed.

     Just yesterday I flicked three off my tomato plants and glared as one flew by. Japanese beetles have been the one thing I haven’t figured out how to prevent other than using some kind of netting around my garden. I’m not sure if these little jerks are a problem everywhere but every summer our plants are swarmed with them at some point. Last year I even made a sport out of walking outside every half hour to shake the potted plants and watch at least 10-15 go flying. I admittedly also took pleasure in squashing them.

     I’m not ashamed.

     I’ve also been seeing more weeds pop up but they are still super small. Fun fact though: I stated before I thought the amount of weeds was because I have the garden in a raised bed and therefore nothing from the ground can come up. One of my mother’s tomato plants, which she keeps in a pot, had a huge weed coming right up from the middle of the pot. So I guess that blows my theory.

     To sum it all up the honeymoon period is over and in this marriage of college student and garden, we’ve moved into a fix-it-upper and it’s over-run by insects, covered in foliage and the only thing that works is the coffee brewer.

     Hopefully the next post will have a tomato or two off the vine.

Adventures in gardening: getting resourceful and powerful

Amazing to see how much its grown in a month!

     Just a quick note to start, no matter if you are doing a photography blog and using your garden as a subject or not, everyone should take pictures periodically throughout their gardening process because you don’t realize how much its’ grown over such a short time.

     For the most part, the drainage situation isn’t affecting the tall plants. Seeing as I have yet to pull up any of my onions or garlic, I cant speak for their progress but they look fine from the upper half.

The two celebrity tomatoes growing side-by-side.

We’ve run into a minor problem. My tomatoes are a bit too close together and I know for next year to plant them spaced apart some more but here’s some of the main issues with their current location.

     As stated before, we’ve had some serious weather these passed few weeks. About a week ago there was a huge storm cell, as in “World News Tonight” did a segment warning people of the danger and tornado risk, and all the plants on our property were at risk.

A blossom on my celebrity tomato plant.

     The winds were nothing short of incredible and damaging. Luckily most of our plants were fine. We had some stargazer lilies fall over in our flower garden and some of the tomato plants suffered. At this stage, only one of my four roma tomato plants were bent and I fixed it by taking a wooden kebab skewer and a twist tie to return it to it’s correct position. A few days later, we dealt with a day of steady rain and relatively intense wind, which resulted in me using kebab skewers on the remaining three roma tomato plants. My celebrity tomato plant has faced the weather like a true champ.

     Other than the issue of falling all over each other and getting their leaves and branches all tangled, my tomato plants are doing well. My roma plants have started blossoming and I have two tomatoes growing on the celebrity plant with blossoms opening all around.

     As for the rest of the plants, they are getting a bit out of hand. I have to search a bit for my sage plant because the basil and tomato plants are hogging the attention. Because of the high amount of basil, I finally cut some off and I’m planning to make some basil infused olive oil. It’s funny because I cut quite a bit off and it looks like I didn’t even dent the plants. Anybody want some basil?

     In other maintenance news, I’m happy to report on the weed situation. I came into this knowing one of the worst parts of gardening is weeding but it’s a necessary evil. I accepted my fate but did so begrudgingly. I don’t know why, though I have theories, I don’t seem to have many weeds. I’m betting it’s because this is a raised bed garden and not plopped on the ground waiting to be invaded. The few weeds I have pulled out have been very, very small and I’m thinking they came from the containers the plants came in. It’s definitely making it easier to like gardening. If you’ve been avoiding trying your hand at gardening because you don’t want to deal with the upkeep then a raised bed is the perfect thing for you because you don’t have to worry about weeds been the nutrient leeches they are.

     I’m hoping by the next blog post I’ll be able to report one of my tomatoes was ready to come off the vine but I feel like it may be the post after. Both are doing fine at the moment but seeing as they are celebrity tomatoes they have to get quite a bit bigger before they are ready to be picked.

Coming soon: college student versus gardening

     One of the fun things about being on summer vacation is not having to rush to and from school. With all that free time, what should I do?

Spearmint in the herb garden.

     Start a garden!
     I've noticed an increasing interest in home gardening and people seem to get a real kick out of growing there own herbs and vegetables instead of making the trip to a grocery store. For the passed few years, my mother has kept an herb garden on our deck and I've learned some things about gardening.

Lavender in the herb garden.

     First, sometimes you just get a bad plant. Usually our basil plants have thrived to the point of not knowing what to do with all the basil leaves we cut off but last year the basil plant slumped. We hadn't done anything different from previous years either and in the past we've had difficulty with one or two plants out of the bunch. Sometimes it's really isn't you, it's them.
     Second, over/under watering. Feeling the soil is key. If it's too dry then water it but if it stays damp for a few days then you shouldn't drown the poor things.
     Third, beetles. I have come to view beetles the same way an old lady views the pesky neighborhood kids who walk across her lawn; they don't belong and I'm not responsible for the way I act if I see them.
     According to the drawer of certificates and the amount of chords I'll be wearing when I graduate from college, I'm perfectly capable of keeping a garden without killing it. I know this is going to be more difficult than the small herb garden on the deck but I'm mentally prepared for this.
     I think.