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Container Gardening

coffee grounds

18 years ago

I am notorious for killing plants, both before and after I plant them. So this year, I made an agreement with myself. After the plants came home with me, I would install the container drip system and have them planted within 2-3 days. No constant rearranging - would this one look better over there - until they're all shriveled up. Mission accomplished:) Drip system functional:) Plants nicely arranged and planted in containers:) Now I'm worrying about the poor things. I used last years potting soil, stirring it up and watering it good first (I didn't want to make my new plants sit in the blazing TX sun - already approaching 90 out there - while I made another trip for more potting soil). So now for my question. Do I need to add some sort of fertilizer? Will sprinkling coffee grounds in and mixing lightly with top layer of the soil help compensate for using last years soil? Or should I just cross my fingers and hope for the best? I'm not so worried about the drainage as the possible lack of essential lack of nutrients.

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Comments (3)

tapla (mid-Michigan, USDA z5b-6a)
18 years ago
Worry about the drainage - you can always add appropriate nutrients. The coffee grounds will do nothing for you in containers except possibly impede drainage.

You can almost never depend on adequate nutrients being supplied by container soils, except for a very few plants that thrive in very spare soils. You didn't say what you're growing, which makes it difficult to guess at what might be an appropriate approach to a nutrient supplement program. It's very easy to over/under water using an irrigation system.

Al
garden1701
Original Author
18 years ago
Al, thank you for your response. I'll skip on the coffee ground idea for the containers. Since it's not just full sun, but full Texas sun and reflected heat from the house that can easily reach 120 during the hot part of the summer, I'm growing mostly drought tolerant plants. It includes Dianthus, African daisy, lavendar, Alyssum, spotted Nettle, a Begonia, Lobelia, Georgia Blue Speedwell, Verbena, and Coreopsis. A few plants were just too pretty to pass up, but I tried to stick with mostly drought tolerant varieties. I do have a couple of fish ponds nearby, so I have an abundance of string algae, pond scum, & fish-poo fortified water. And I just found a box of miracle grow in the garage. I'm used to gardening in our horrid clay soil, but new to containers, and simply don't know what special treatment they need.
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suzi7
18 years ago
if you are reusing last years potting soil they are deflated, they probably has no nutrition left in there. so you need chuck some out and freshen up with the new potting mix or even better some compost upto 25%( get a bag from garden center)
if you want to mix some fertilizer with it, i generally don't bother with miracle gro type of stuff- too much work and too much potential problem. get a small bag of flowertone it's organic fertilizer granules that can be mixed with the initial potting soil mix. you can get a small bag from any garden center, home depot wherever for 6-7 bucks. they'll serve you good. coffee ground won't probably do much unless you wanna acidify your soil for acid loving plants and it alone will not improve the spent potting soil providing everything plants need. keep it simple and good luck

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