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West Chazy,N.Y.

Ok!!! thanks for the advice everyone....
I can get all the coffee grounds I need or want from the local restaurant. Is early spring to
late to till them in? ( my tiller doesm't work well in 3 feet of snow) ha ha!!!!
Is there a specific list of fertilizers needed?

1/19/2004 8:07:11 PM

Tipp City, Ohio

Have a soil test done by a lab and they can tell you what specifics you need in general.

1/19/2004 8:36:06 PM

Montoursville, PA

Coffee grounds are nicely and evenly balanced at very low levels as a fertilizer. The fact that earthworms love them and that coffee grounds are common food, for them, is the major issue. An earthworm will digest and deposit its own weight each day, in the soil. If you try to purchase earthworm casts you will discover that they are the highest priced fertilizer available for your use.

For every pound of coffee grounds you put in you get back an ample supply of earthworm casts....and a healthier worm for the effort. You may add them in modest amounts anytime you can scratch them into the top half inch or so of the soil.

1/19/2004 10:21:27 PM

Mill Bay, British Columbia

Good point Dwaine. I have been adding used Starbucks grounds into my soil for the past 5 years (as well as various composts, manures and leaf matter)and have never seen so many worms per square foot in my life. As Dwaine stated, worms produce an amazing amount of castings each day and certainly improve your soil with their presence. One more great thing for my area is that slugs seem to avoid coffee grounds and I use it all the way along the perimeter of my patch.

Go ahead and add those coffee grounds right on top of the snow and they will work their way in.

Glenn

1/20/2004 4:28:27 PM

Mill Bay, British Columbia

FYI - Starbucks has a compost program and all you have to do is ask for them to save grounds for you.

Check it out at http://www.starbucks.com/aboutus/compost.asp

Glenn

1/20/2004 4:29:41 PM

Puyallup, WA

No one uses more coffee ground than me! I am a firm believer that the presence of earthworms is a definate "plus" to maintaining healthy soil. I pick up about 20 pounds of grounds every day from my Starbucks......
plus what I can get at the local college cafeteria. I put in more than two tons a year into my patch.....and to answer your your question...the soil is still not "black"!
:>)

1/26/2004 6:28:10 PM

Menomonie, WI (mail@gr8pumpkin.net)

Poor Worms Stan..... I can see them now...Migarating to there favorite sections of the garden...The Expresso and latte eaters with their books, Then we have Royal Kona Blend over here...Then there would be just the average Joe working worms eating up the cafeteria coffee. Then the slow sluggish ones in the decaf area.

1/26/2004 7:07:32 PM

Puyallup, WA

Most humorous! What an imagination!

1/26/2004 7:27:30 PM

Montoursville, PA

Stan....humorous and imagination??? Good grief that's really the way it is. We can't help there is only one pumpkin book writer and the fact he is not wormed up to par as of the last edition. Corn meal Latties are the absolute ultimate top shelf underground wormy meal. Topped with soured whipped cream for a carbs boost is a little hard to deliver but would be appreciated if it were available.

2/3/2004 11:36:51 AM

Garden State Pumpkins

I pick up about 50 lbs a week...(wet) sometimes a little more from my morning coffee stop. I've alway worried that it might effect the PH but was recommended from the worm farm I got the worms from as a feed...THEY do seem a little wired but keep coming for more.

2/3/2004 6:26:48 PM

Montoursville, PA

We used to add a teaspoon full of rum to the Latte mixes. That assured us that by ten AM the heaviest worm boozers would curl on the fish hook and if we left an inch trailer the trailer would kick anti-clockwise while the body would swirl clockwise. Drove the big bas nuts. They could not figure it out so they chompped down, on them every time.

You guys take notes if you can't keep up with the latest techniques for catching huge giant bass.

3/7/2004 5:37:41 PM

Montoursville, PA

Coffee grounds as is true of most organics used with moderation will not dump your PH apple cart all that quickly. They may push PH up or down a little but "all" composted materials come back to aproximatel PH 7. Organics added anytime within reason and if they are at least partially composted.

It is nice to know that if you manage to do something stupid it only takes time to recover to healthy patch. Make a similar chemical error and you can be in long term difficulty. There are a few exceptions to this comment but they appear on the organic side of things so infrequently that discussion or alert is hardly worth mentioning.

It is true that I gardened the same spot of ground over fifty years without the use of much synthetic chemicals and without a soil test. When you guys talked me into a soil test I needed a total of two bags of ground limestone to be ready to grow my two pumpkins...one 700+ the other 400+ on the normal fall additions of manures, components of compost and trace minerals plus a cover crop. Anything else I snuck in was pure conjecture that it might be a good additive.

The more I talk to and listen to growers in the Northeast they are back to basics....good solid basics and no "magic in a bag or bottle". From my viewpoint and ears that stick straight out from my head there is less and less use of synthetic fertilizers. Some top growers use none.

No one has made a study of major pumpkins showing up year after year in the same patches where healthy patch is a major concern as compared to known uses of moderate to heavy use of synthetic practices. That's difficult data to accumulate and the big looser in trouble of course does not like to admit failure.

3/9/2004 9:38:20 AM