My daughter soaks her banana skins in water and feeds her house plants they are so healthy with high gloss they almost look plastic I couldn't be leave my eyes when I saw them she has a lot of succulents and unusual coloured leaf plants !!!I feed my house plants with free and camomile teabags stepped in milk cartons keep topping them up with water till you need more fresh teabags I use this on my strawberries as well my peace Lilly's are healthy I grow apple and orange ,lemon seeds in beside them and pot them on when 2,3 inches I have an apple tree from seed in my garden now 15 yrs old ,bumper apples for cooking,!!!!!😇😇😇
My region is notorious for acidic and poor soil, a mix of heavy clay and silt due to high-ish altitudes and glacial deposits around the pacific northwest of the USA. However, my 85 year old neighbor successfully grows a bounty every year. According to her, she has buried her kitchen scraps in the yard for over 30 years, and the tilth in her yard is incredible. Every year, she grows canes of raspberries, blueberries, peaches, volumes of tomatoes, and the list goes on. It goes to show that expensive and synthetic gardening approaches give quick but not superior results.
Yes, Banana Peels, orange peels, Apple cores, Corn Cobs, Mango Peels, bits of Watermelon, Cantaloupe, Pumpkin, egg shells, coffee grounds, tea bags, paper towels, napkins, leaves, chop and drop, and wood chips(through a service online, or just contact an arborists who cuts/mulches old trees locally). Thank you for your videos.
I have a kitchen waste bucket in which I put all those things and torn up toilet roll middles (except the ash) and when it is full I add to the compost bin.
If your compost seems a bit acidic after a large nitrogen (greens) addition, add the ground up eggshells to raise the pH. The resulting chemical reaction also unlocks nutrients in the calcium carbonate.
Finally Ha Ha! The sky is beautiful today. I see you worked hard on your content. From a plethora of channels i found yours! New week, new upload. Peace!
Hi Ben..."what the cluck?" I am still laughing! Yes I do all the above but mine all goes into multiple compost piles. And yes it is all great stuff....excellent reminder for everyone to make sure you use all your compostable materials and nothing really gets wasted! Thanks for the excellent video. Mike 🇨🇦🍁👍
Brilliant. I compost them all except wood ash because we have no wood-burning stove. In fact, we salvage our veggie waste for the compost heap. Not only do we end up with healthier garden soil and more veggies, we also save things going to the landfill. You know: saving the planet, one banana peel at a time. :-)
Thanks Ben for all the great advice. I actually collect my eggshells, pop them in the oven, grind them down and re-feed them to my chickens. I feel they benefit more than my plants, because my compost already contains all the goodies, lol Have a nice remaining weekend 😉
Today I baked eggshells and then popped into an old grinder for my new veggies with coffee grounds ☀️😊thanks Ben! I knew there was a way to use the egg shells but didn’t know to bake and powder them first for the soil & plants benefit. Great tips and fun cheery videos!
Good video Ben. As in most of life a little of everything does you good. By the way, in 2017, the Food Standards Agency announced that almost all UK-produced eggs are virtually free of salmonella, so i just dry and grind mine, but I know that many people will want to play safe. Happy gardening
From the US. I've never baked egg shells before grinding. How does the salmonella become... toxic to humans? Why is it a problem? Glad UK eggs are salmonella free!
Coffee grounds seem to minimize the effects of flea beetles too! I sprinkled them heavily around spinach this year and the difference was significant. Also around the Japanese greens I tried for the first time this summer here in Vermont.
I use a 50/50 mix of coffee grounds and sawdust to keep my worms fed as well as kitchen scraps. I cover that with a layer of bagged garden soil. To harvest the worm castings, I stop feeding for 2 weeks then bury a couple of halved frozen bananas at one end of the bin so the worms migrate there, then after a week, I collect the castings from the opposite side to add to my soil. I have a small patio with 4 raised 18-gal storage totes. Zone 9a. It's December and we haven't had freezing temps yet!
I've worked in the local grocery store's produce department for over a year, and I regularly obtain cardboard (which I cut up into small squares, for carbon) and various scraps for my dad's composting, which he's been doing for nearly three years. The scraps I used to retrieve cabbage leaves and corn husks as the primary, and asparagus trimmings and bell pepper shells secondary, but the district produce merchandiser (ie, district manager of the company's produce division) recently adjusted cabbage presentation, meaning we have to leave the leaves on, so now I can't get those. Fortunately, there's a small Starbucks kiosk at my store's main entrance and an actual location about a quarter mile down the road, so I guess I'll try to start collecting the real location's grounds.........
You should be fine to just at them straight onto your compost heap. But do you sterilise them with adding to your soil around actively growing plants. Just to be on the safe side.
Lol you do make me giggle. We have been composting for years but do it simply cut up banana skins he husband eats one a day, egg shells I’ve never crushed or sterilized we just wash out any yolk and add them in compost and twice a year we can burn so we add bits of ash too. Thank you for sharing ✌️🇨🇦🐝 safe
I have used everything in the video except the Ash, as for the Egg Shells i chuck mine in the microwave for 30 sec before crushing them up in a mini food chopper, then into an old ice cream tub before using them on my beds and Compost Heap. Stay Safe, Barry (Wirral)
At last…a garden commentator who talks sense re ph of used coffee grounds. I did ph tests on them and found them to be neutral…esp when using our hard water to make coffee😀😀😀jinxy
I work with natural slate, and have guillotines set up in my workshop, when cutting frequently I end up with lots of slate dust. Originally I tried using this dust to try and prevent weeds coming up, then I noticed that the weeds seemed to grow even faster! I started experimenting with it and now I often mix it with well rotten horse manure and home made compost to grow veg. I use slate from all over the world mainly Welsh, Spanish, Chinese, Brazilian so its quite a unique mixture. I have sacks of the stuff, your welcome to a bag of it if you want to try it out.
I just collected lots of bagged leaves and cardboard for the garden. Now I just need to water them and add green material such as some bags of composted cow manure to speed up the decomposition. I plant tomatoes in them the following Spring so the worms will enrich my soil. Keep up making your great programs! They keep me motivated.
And id you have a fish tank and you do your regular water changes, put that water into good use and give it to the flowers in your house/ garden. Fishpoop is great and a not to strong fertilizer so it wont overpower any small or sensitive roots.
When I make my green smoothie with broccoli kale and celery and Kiwi fruit and green tea I rinse the container and keep that water and put it back into my garden
My compost is about 50% garden scraps and 50% morning breakfast (coffee grounds, egg shells (never sterilize -- but also in the US with washed shells), banana peels, and my morning news paper). I also always put all my ash from my camp fires into it. My garden loves it and it is better than the compost I can buy. I have never put it directly on the garden; always through the compost bin first. My great grandmother would burn down her summer garden every fall and leave the ash in the garden -- it was very interesting to watch, though could not do it now without the fire department showing up. Also egg shells (this time sterlize) are great to add to your aquarium too -- -increases Ph and many micros for snails and for plants.
We get free coffee grounds from the coffee shop on our allotment site - great stuff. Haha - yes, so many myths on the internet!! Great video again, Ben. Stay safe and have a great week!
I make almost this exact soil amendment for my plants as well but a few tweaks. I pile up a big bunch of leaves in the fall and put wood ash, banana peels, eggshells and coffee/tea grounds in it (over the end of the fall till the following spring) for my following spring-fall feeding (once it breaks down well). I keep a separate pile of compost for random kitchen scrap, plant trimmings, and grass etc. I use this second compost for feeding as well but in a different manner, instead of putting on the top of soil I usually put it at the bottom of pots or newly planted plants (so no weed/grass seeds germinate).
I add all of these to my compost, though my "wood ash" is actually leaf ash, and I didn't know about cooking eggshells to get rid of salmonella. Thanks for the tip!
If you monitor your compost pile with a thermometer you will see that the temps go above 130F. As long as it is held at that temp for longer than 1 hour all salmonella will die. So no real need to cook them prior since really any compost pile will exceed 130 F
@@rogerthat9869 Of course salmonella is safe. If there are two things I've learned from the internet, they are that everything natural is safe and everything discovered by scientists is false. Let's go drink some arsenic.
Haha, I love your enthusiasm Ben. Another great video full of great information. I’m in NZ. Most coffee shops will save their grounds if you ask because they like the grounds are being put to good use.
I freeze banana peels. When I get a decent amount, I thaw them out and blitz them in the blender with enough unchlorinated water to make a 'smoothie' to pour onto the compost.
Love your enthusiasm wonderful cheery watching with a few lessons to learn ie used to make scrambled eggs and scrunch the eggs shells up and put straight on veg patch......oh dear.
thanks for the video. Shame about slugs control, we need to reframe our relationship with our fellow competitors. Let them have some. I do lose some plants I win other. Handpicking on early plants and move them away.
Thanks Ben, I’ve always composted everything that I use but I will try to save some in tubs to use as mulches/fertiliser, remembering what you’ve said about plant preferences. I found my eggshells weren’t composting well, but now grind them into a powder like you do. 👍
I am glad to have found this video.. I save my kitchen compost up in one container. Then just dumping onto my compost pile, mix it in. Thinking that was good.. Wow. I am wide eyed on this subject now. I trust everything you are saying in your videos because my college's horticulture office emails these to me. I am confident in what you have informed me of. Thank u
Hi Kayla. Thanks for watching and for your kind comments. Quite a bit or research goes into the videos to make sure we only ever give proper advice. There's a lot of questionable stuff out there!
Fab video! I already use crushed eggshells in my garden and we compost everything we can. We don't have a wood fire and don't drink brewed coffee, so I'll see if anyone in the neighbourhood has any to spare. Thanks, Ben!
Hi Robin. I popped into my local Cafe Nero in town. They were happy to give it away - I guess it gets chucked out anyway. They were very interested to know what I was up to with it, so you may find you manage to set up a regular supplier if you get them interested.
@@GrowVeg That's fab, I'll have a nosey around to see what I can find. It sounds like a great way to get some additional benefit from something that will go in the bin.
I have loads of paper waste from computer printouts, invoices, newspapers, magazines and coloured cardboard from equipment for garden kitchen or just about anything these days that needs a highly coloured packgeing.
Really hoping to start a composting area this year, might be too late to use it to start the soil off, but goodness we will have plenty of everything to add throughout the year! I think instead, while we work on our own, our area does green waste, and eventually they have enough composted that people can go pick up for free! Which also makes me feel good that our scraps still dont go to waste.
One year I tried putting some kitchen scraps in the flower bench, or herb container was how I used it. The results of the test I observed a year later when cleaning the container: banana peels were almost gone, chicken bones were there but the scraps on the bones were not (obviously), coffee grounds probably mixed in or decomposed in the soil and egg shells (in halves, I didn't grind them) looking like I put them in yesterday. But it was interesting to try.
YES I collect collect collect all that comes out of my home and others if possible; no fireplace; but will have to look around for those that do &/or have outdoor firepits. I've kept (open) compost pile for many years now (even though living in suburbs) & great having that "black gold" soil to add to potting soil mix. I utilize a lot of eggshells, banana & citrus peels & dry; ground, pulverize, compost or save for later. No garden though just lots of (outdoor) plants; except I do grow luffa/loofah for the luffa (scrubs) to use in kitchen/bathroom & utilize the bits & pieces of dried luffas in my bottom on my pots to help w/drainage!! LOVE YOUR INFORMATION!
I haven’t been practicing these methods in the past, but I will now. I truly love your comical influence in your videos. You’ve become my favorite channel on UA-cam. Thanks
Just chiming in to say how much I appreciate these vids, especially in these bleak, short days of early winter (yes IK it's not technically winter yet; the calendar is wrong, that's all). Is it too soon to start buying seeds for next spring? I'm having gardening withdrawal symptoms already. 🤢
@@GrowVeg Sweet, good enough for GrowVeg, good enough for me. 😁 Gonna go ahead and start ordering this weekend. I try to buy as locally as possible, but have found shortages lately...but then even Burpee more often than not is out of the variety I'm looking for. Always on the lookout for any suggestions, and if I find one myself, I'll post it.
I just love these videos. Cheery, concise and so informative. I have been binge-watching all your videos for the last week. Thanks so much for providing this information, can't wait to get started
Very good idea to convert kitchen waste to super food for plants and gardens. We often use such kitchen waste for our small garden. Thanks for sharing such a nice video. I liked your video and SUBSCRIBED to your channel. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2022.
Great video for knowledge and entertainment. Thank you. I was not aware that I needed to sterilize the egg shells so happy to walk away with some new knowledge. Thanks for your videos I have learned a lot from them.
"What the cluck?!?". Omg, you are adorable.
Haha, cheers Terry!
“Give me some skin Brah!” 😂🤣😂 I laughed so hard. Thank you for all the useful information you share. Many thanks!
Glad to have raised a smile CJ!
At least it made someone laugh
i usually just wash my egg shells and let them drain before crushing them in my mortar and pestle. so satisfying.
Grind the eggshells...You're a genius!
You've got great videos going back quite a ways! Love to see the dad-jokes and puns, that's my kind of humor too :)
Dad jokes are the best! :-)
My daughter soaks her banana skins in water and feeds her house plants they are so healthy with high gloss they almost look plastic I couldn't be leave my eyes when I saw them she has a lot of succulents and unusual coloured leaf plants !!!I feed my house plants with free and camomile teabags stepped in milk cartons keep topping them up with water till you need more fresh teabags I use this on my strawberries as well my peace Lilly's are healthy I grow apple and orange ,lemon seeds in beside them and pot them on when 2,3 inches I have an apple tree from seed in my garden now 15 yrs old ,bumper apples for cooking,!!!!!😇😇😇
What a great idea. I've heard of banana skins being used for this purpose - will have to give it a go!
My region is notorious for acidic and poor soil, a mix of heavy clay and silt due to high-ish altitudes and glacial deposits around the pacific northwest of the USA. However, my 85 year old neighbor successfully grows a bounty every year. According to her, she has buried her kitchen scraps in the yard for over 30 years, and the tilth in her yard is incredible. Every year, she grows canes of raspberries, blueberries, peaches, volumes of tomatoes, and the list goes on. It goes to show that expensive and synthetic gardening approaches give quick but not superior results.
Absolutely. Slowly, steadily-fed soils give the most consistent and long-term results Adam.
Yes, Banana Peels, orange peels, Apple cores, Corn Cobs, Mango Peels, bits of Watermelon, Cantaloupe, Pumpkin, egg shells, coffee grounds, tea bags, paper towels, napkins, leaves, chop and drop, and wood chips(through a service online, or just contact an arborists who cuts/mulches old trees locally). Thank you for your videos.
Glad I watched this. I’ve always tossed grounds and shells into the compost heap.
"Gimmie some skin bruh" lol my new fave guy
Haha - cheers Jay!
Grow Organic Grow! May the best bud win.
'Give me some skin bro!' I was dying when i heard that. i love you Ben!!!
With green tea not free!!!!!! For feeding my plants!!!😇😇😇
I have a kitchen waste bucket in which I put all those things and torn up toilet roll middles (except the ash) and when it is full I add to the compost bin.
Been doing all of the above for years. Glad to see I've been doing it right. Have a great day, take care and stay safe, Sandie from Ontario Canada.
Nice one Sandie - and you.
If your compost seems a bit acidic after a large nitrogen (greens) addition, add the ground up eggshells to raise the pH. The resulting chemical reaction also unlocks nutrients in the calcium carbonate.
Dude, your puns are literally making me cry with laughter!!!!! Rock Star Ben at it again. You are awesome!
Cheers Alexander. You'll love our mushroom video that's coming up - a few puns in there to keep you happy!!
Also use your cooking water for plants. Rice water, Brocoli water etc. Great video 👍 👍
Oh great tip! Thanks 😊
As long as you don't salt the water.
I desiccate my banana peels in my dehydrator or oven then grind them as you did with the egg shells.
Awesome idea
Being a lazy gardener I just chuck them all onto my compost heap.
Me too. All that extra work, I find, is unnecessary.
Absolutely. To be honest, most does just end up on the compost heap - it all gets its way back to the soil eventually.
Very informative! Love this guy. So full of enthusiasm!
Cheers Chris! :-)
Finally Ha Ha! The sky is beautiful today. I see you worked hard on your content. From a plethora of channels i found yours! New week, new upload. Peace!
Peace back to you - thanks for watching!
This is by far the funniest but most informative video you've done in a while. I absolutely love it! Keep up the great work!
Thanks for that - the feedback is appreciated. So pleased you enjoyed it. :-)
@@GrowVeg I had to copy the "give me some skin bruh" with the bananas to my husband, I laughed so hard! Thanks, Ben!
Hi Ben..."what the cluck?" I am still laughing!
Yes I do all the above but mine all goes into multiple compost piles. And yes it is all great stuff....excellent reminder for everyone to make sure you use all your compostable materials and nothing really gets wasted!
Thanks for the excellent video.
Mike 🇨🇦🍁👍
Cheers Mike - great to hear you are such a composting pro - nice work!
Brilliant. I compost them all except wood ash because we have no wood-burning stove. In fact, we salvage our veggie waste for the compost heap. Not only do we end up with healthier garden soil and more veggies, we also save things going to the landfill. You know: saving the planet, one banana peel at a time. :-)
Absolutely Leo!
Thanks Ben for all the great advice. I actually collect my eggshells, pop them in the oven, grind them down and re-feed them to my chickens. I feel they benefit more than my plants, because my compost already contains all the goodies, lol
Have a nice remaining weekend 😉
Yes, I've heard that's a great way to reuse them too - and birds in general appreciate eggshells, so good for garden birds too.
@@GrowVeg it's great calcium for them to produce good eggs. I love the cycle of nature so much!
Can i ask how do you feed them with egg shells? Do you just give it like that or you mix it in with other chicken food?
@@skeletoninyourbody9896 I do both. I mix it under their daily pebbles and pour it in a bowl, next to fresh veggies and fruit.
I boil my egg shells, then dry them in oven, before grinding for grid for my worms in my worm bag
Today I baked eggshells and then popped into an old grinder for my new veggies with coffee grounds ☀️😊thanks Ben! I knew there was a way to use the egg shells but didn’t know to bake and powder them first for the soil & plants benefit. Great tips and fun cheery videos!
Great stuff! :-)
I save egg shells, leaves, tea leaves, orange peels, and food scraps
Good video Ben. As in most of life a little of everything does you good.
By the way, in 2017, the Food Standards Agency announced that almost all UK-produced eggs are virtually free of salmonella, so i just dry and grind mine, but I know that many people will want to play safe.
Happy gardening
Absolutely. Much less risk of salmonella these days.
From the US. I've never baked egg shells before grinding. How does the salmonella become... toxic to humans? Why is it a problem? Glad UK eggs are salmonella free!
@@MamboDogFace it makes a human immensely sick. My husband had once from egg - was ill for 2 weeks, high fever and everything
I haven't baked egg shells because of salmonrlla but we do bake them so that the chickens don't get into a habit of eatng their own shells.
I add the coffee ground right in the soil and mix in it works for me , I'm in arizona usa ,🥰
I sprinkle coffee as a cure against slugs. Especially all over strawberries
Coffee grounds seem to minimize the effects of flea beetles too! I sprinkled them heavily around spinach this year and the difference was significant. Also around the Japanese greens I tried for the first time this summer here in Vermont.
Interesting, will have to try this out.
I use a 50/50 mix of coffee grounds and sawdust to keep my worms fed as well as kitchen scraps. I cover that with a layer of bagged garden soil. To harvest the worm castings, I stop feeding for 2 weeks then bury a couple of halved frozen bananas at one end of the bin so the worms migrate there, then after a week, I collect the castings from the opposite side to add to my soil. I have a small patio with 4 raised 18-gal storage totes. Zone 9a. It's December and we haven't had freezing temps yet!
What a great system you have going there!
I've worked in the local grocery store's produce department for over a year, and I regularly obtain cardboard (which I cut up into small squares, for carbon) and various scraps for my dad's composting, which he's been doing for nearly three years. The scraps I used to retrieve cabbage leaves and corn husks as the primary, and asparagus trimmings and bell pepper shells secondary, but the district produce merchandiser (ie, district manager of the company's produce division) recently adjusted cabbage presentation, meaning we have to leave the leaves on, so now I can't get those. Fortunately, there's a small Starbucks kiosk at my store's main entrance and an actual location about a quarter mile down the road, so I guess I'll try to start collecting the real location's grounds.........
Definitely start collecting those grounds!
Thanks Ben. I just crush my egg shells but will now thoroughly clean and bake before blitzing Makes good sense.
You should be fine to just at them straight onto your compost heap. But do you sterilise them with adding to your soil around actively growing plants. Just to be on the safe side.
Lol you do make me giggle. We have been composting for years but do it simply cut up banana skins he husband eats one a day, egg shells I’ve never crushed or sterilized we just wash out any yolk and add them in compost and twice a year we can burn so we add bits of ash too. Thank you for sharing ✌️🇨🇦🐝 safe
Making use of everything there Ali - great to hear!
Ben you really are the best! I can’t wait till you’ve got your own program on TV!
Ah bless you, thanks Lily. :-)
Compost/garden soil, is my favorite subject. It’s the garden’s foundation.
I have used everything in the video except the Ash, as for the Egg Shells i chuck mine in the microwave for 30 sec before crushing them up in a mini food chopper, then into an old ice cream tub before using them on my beds and Compost Heap.
Stay Safe,
Barry (Wirral)
Nice one Barry - and you. :-)
Our fancy bred Red Wiggler worms 🪱 love coffee grounds. It gets their wee bellies going.
At last…a garden commentator who talks sense re ph of used coffee grounds. I did ph tests on them and found them to be neutral…esp when using our hard water to make coffee😀😀😀jinxy
I work with natural slate, and have guillotines set up in my workshop, when cutting frequently I end up with lots of slate dust. Originally I tried using this dust to try and prevent weeds coming up, then I noticed that the weeds seemed to grow even faster! I started experimenting with it and now I often mix it with well rotten horse manure and home made compost to grow veg.
I use slate from all over the world mainly Welsh, Spanish, Chinese, Brazilian so its quite a unique mixture. I have sacks of the stuff, your welcome to a bag of it if you want to try it out.
Oh wow - it must be like that volcanic ruck dust you find. :-)
@@GrowVeg Hi, yes I think its basically the same stuff, they just give it a fancy name. Slate is just sediment full of minerals.
I just collected lots of bagged leaves and cardboard for the garden. Now I just need to water them and add green material such as some bags of composted cow manure to speed up the decomposition. I plant tomatoes in them the following Spring so the worms will enrich my soil. Keep up making your great programs! They keep me motivated.
We'll keep making our programs Mark, don't worry. We want to keep you motivated!
And id you have a fish tank and you do your regular water changes, put that water into good use and give it to the flowers in your house/ garden. Fishpoop is great and a not to strong fertilizer so it wont overpower any small or sensitive roots.
What a great tip Nils, many thanks.
Okay na okay page merong ganito na halaman sa bahay, enjoy!
What the cluck...-hahahah :D great tips for a great use of the "kitchen waste"
I find Coffee grounds are great for keeping snails off your seedlings.
When I make my green smoothie with broccoli kale and celery and Kiwi fruit and green tea I rinse the container and keep that water and put it back into my garden
Great idea. 😀
Swap to loose-leaf tea and a teapot rather than teabags - less waste, less packaging and more composting :-)
Yes, good tip. :-)
Love you my brother!!
And you man!
My compost is about 50% garden scraps and 50% morning breakfast (coffee grounds, egg shells (never sterilize -- but also in the US with washed shells), banana peels, and my morning news paper). I also always put all my ash from my camp fires into it. My garden loves it and it is better than the compost I can buy. I have never put it directly on the garden; always through the compost bin first. My great grandmother would burn down her summer garden every fall and leave the ash in the garden -- it was very interesting to watch, though could not do it now without the fire department showing up. Also egg shells (this time sterlize) are great to add to your aquarium too -- -increases Ph and many micros for snails and for plants.
Thanks for the tip about the use in aquaria there Joshua.
We get free coffee grounds from the coffee shop on our allotment site - great stuff.
Haha - yes, so many myths on the internet!!
Great video again, Ben. Stay safe and have a great week!
Cheers for that mate. You have a great week also!
Yes I enjoyed this review and I'd like to say I'm up to around 5' 8".
Great video ! Thank You so much, from Michigan !
Cheers Daniela.
You should include Bokashi Bin composting... compost everything from bread and pasta to meat and cooked foods.
Yes, definitely!
Good job, my English friend!😊 Hi from my garden in Kaliningrad!))
Hello back - and thank you for watching. :-)
@@GrowVegI save used tea leaves in a jar then apply to my plants as and when tea
Lot of positive energy & great garden tips & tricks !
Yes, Yes I use all of this in my Garden. Does wonders for my garden soil and plants.
“Give me some skin bruh” something about your English accent has me addicted to this channel lol the endless knowledge and tips help out too 😎🤘🏼🪴
Cheers Logan! Thanks for watching. :-)
Great items to use in garden soil that one would just normally throw away Thanks
I make almost this exact soil amendment for my plants as well but a few tweaks. I pile up a big bunch of leaves in the fall and put wood ash, banana peels, eggshells and coffee/tea grounds in it (over the end of the fall till the following spring) for my following spring-fall feeding (once it breaks down well). I keep a separate pile of compost for random kitchen scrap, plant trimmings, and grass etc. I use this second compost for feeding as well but in a different manner, instead of putting on the top of soil I usually put it at the bottom of pots or newly planted plants (so no weed/grass seeds germinate).
Very interesting to hear your system Ryan, thanks for sharing.
I add all of these to my compost, though my "wood ash" is actually leaf ash, and I didn't know about cooking eggshells to get rid of salmonella. Thanks for the tip!
If you monitor your compost pile with a thermometer you will see that the temps go above 130F. As long as it is held at that temp for longer than 1 hour all salmonella will die. So no real need to cook them prior since really any compost pile will exceed 130 F
@@pewpewkachew4735 Not all compost is hot compost. My pile is small, so it probably doesn't heat up that much.
Salmonella is a bacteria which is good for the ground and body to, if you cook it you’re pretty much making the egg void of all nutrients
@@rogerthat9869 Of course salmonella is safe. If there are two things I've learned from the internet, they are that everything natural is safe and everything discovered by scientists is false. Let's go drink some arsenic.
Saving them all. Turning the compost heap regularly.
I add tea ☕️ bags , egg shells, banana peals , and kitchen scraps to my garden.
Nice one Kathy!
Haha, I love your enthusiasm Ben. Another great video full of great information. I’m in NZ. Most coffee shops will save their grounds if you ask because they like the grounds are being put to good use.
Absolutely John, that's what I found. You just have to go and ask.
Yes, I save the same items for my garden. I’m jealous of your greenhouse. I plan to build a small one this year out of recycled windows.
Great idea to try recycling windows like that - what a fab project. :-)
@@GrowVeg thanks, there’s no value in putting the old windows in a landfill. I like your channel because you’re frugal and eco friendly.
I'm jealous of that greenhouse too!
Yup, they are all in my compost heap.
Love your vlogs- funny & jam packed with information!! Learn something new every time. Thanks Ben
I freeze banana peels. When I get a decent amount, I thaw them out and blitz them in the blender with enough unchlorinated water to make a 'smoothie' to pour onto the compost.
Hmm - sounds almost tasty!
Love your enthusiasm wonderful cheery watching with a few lessons to learn ie used to make scrambled eggs and scrunch the eggs shells up and put straight on veg patch......oh dear.
I think you'd probably be fine there Sarah - sterilising is just to be on the safe side.
I have, too. As well as fall leaves! I'm an American in France! Love your videos.
Thanks for watching Gail.
thanks for the video. Shame about slugs control, we need to reframe our relationship with our fellow competitors. Let them have some. I do lose some plants I win other. Handpicking on early plants and move them away.
Yes, that's a good, balanced approach.
Love your videos. You are hilarious!
Thanks Hali!
Thanks Ben, I’ve always composted everything that I use but I will try to save some in tubs to use as mulches/fertiliser, remembering what you’ve said about plant preferences.
I found my eggshells weren’t composting well, but now grind them into a powder like you do. 👍
Grinding them up really helps them to disappear into the compost and do their thing Del.
Yep, we now have an old blender that is the shell-er-ator, only used to pulverize eggshells :)
I am glad to have found this video.. I save my kitchen compost up in one container. Then just dumping onto my compost pile, mix it in. Thinking that was good.. Wow. I am wide eyed on this subject now. I trust everything you are saying in your videos because my college's horticulture office emails these to me. I am confident in what you have informed me of. Thank u
Hi Kayla. Thanks for watching and for your kind comments. Quite a bit or research goes into the videos to make sure we only ever give proper advice. There's a lot of questionable stuff out there!
Fab video! I already use crushed eggshells in my garden and we compost everything we can. We don't have a wood fire and don't drink brewed coffee, so I'll see if anyone in the neighbourhood has any to spare. Thanks, Ben!
Hello! Not sure where you live, but often cafes will gift out coffee grounds for free, they do here in Nz.
@@lesleewhittaker6687 I'm in Scotland, we have a local cafe, I may ask them!
Hi Robin. I popped into my local Cafe Nero in town. They were happy to give it away - I guess it gets chucked out anyway. They were very interested to know what I was up to with it, so you may find you manage to set up a regular supplier if you get them interested.
@@GrowVeg That's fab, I'll have a nosey around to see what I can find. It sounds like a great way to get some additional benefit from something that will go in the bin.
Thanks for another great video! 🐕🐸🦎🐛🦋
Fully agree on everything
Great sharing video and love it
I have loads of paper waste from computer printouts, invoices, newspapers, magazines and coloured cardboard from equipment for garden kitchen or just about anything these days that needs a highly coloured packgeing.
I wouldn't add glossy paper from magazines to the garden/compost heap - it's not as pure as plain paper from newspapers and plain cardboard.
Really hoping to start a composting area this year, might be too late to use it to start the soil off, but goodness we will have plenty of everything to add throughout the year! I think instead, while we work on our own, our area does green waste, and eventually they have enough composted that people can go pick up for free! Which also makes me feel good that our scraps still dont go to waste.
Great that you have access to green waste also.
One year I tried putting some kitchen scraps in the flower bench, or herb container was how I used it. The results of the test I observed a year later when cleaning the container: banana peels were almost gone, chicken bones were there but the scraps on the bones were not (obviously), coffee grounds probably mixed in or decomposed in the soil and egg shells (in halves, I didn't grind them) looking like I put them in yesterday. But it was interesting to try.
Great to try these things for sure. :-)
Awesome content
Ah! Found the egg shells. Maybe banana skins and orange peel are also here!
YES I collect collect collect all that comes out of my home and others if possible; no fireplace; but will have to look around for those that do &/or have outdoor firepits. I've kept (open) compost pile for many years now (even though living in suburbs) & great having that "black gold" soil to add to potting soil mix. I utilize a lot of eggshells, banana & citrus peels & dry; ground, pulverize, compost or save for later. No garden though just lots of (outdoor) plants; except I do grow luffa/loofah for the luffa (scrubs) to use in kitchen/bathroom & utilize the bits & pieces of dried luffas in my bottom on my pots to help w/drainage!! LOVE YOUR INFORMATION!
Cheers for watching! 🙌
I haven’t been practicing these methods in the past, but I will now. I truly love your comical influence in your videos. You’ve become my favorite channel on UA-cam. Thanks
Cheers for that John - you're a star for watching. :-)
Love all the tips and your enthusiasm!! Thank you Ben!
Thank you!
Just chiming in to say how much I appreciate these vids, especially in these bleak, short days of early winter (yes IK it's not technically winter yet; the calendar is wrong, that's all). Is it too soon to start buying seeds for next spring? I'm having gardening withdrawal symptoms already. 🤢
Yeah, I'm really missing my garden, and it's only early December.
Hi Frank. It's never too early to start dreaming and ordering seeds!
@@GrowVeg Sweet, good enough for GrowVeg, good enough for me. 😁 Gonna go ahead and start ordering this weekend. I try to buy as locally as possible, but have found shortages lately...but then even Burpee more often than not is out of the variety I'm looking for. Always on the lookout for any suggestions, and if I find one myself, I'll post it.
Thank you Ben! 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼✅💜
Very educational, Give me some skin Brah! You are incredible, I’m learning so much from you …
I just love these videos. Cheery, concise and so informative. I have been binge-watching all your videos for the last week. Thanks so much for providing this information, can't wait to get started
Thanks so much for your kind words, it's appreciated. Great to have you as part of the channel! :-)
Ive been doing this but Im glad to here Ive been doing it right, also your jokes make me laugh every time!
Super stuff @Legend0222!
great idea to use coffee grounds as a mulch! I have never heard of sterilizing egg shells.thankyou.😁 great, informative video..
The sterilising is only really necessary if you're going to add them straight to the soil, around growing plants.
Very good idea to convert kitchen waste to super food for plants and gardens.
We often use such kitchen waste for our small garden. Thanks for sharing such a nice video.
I liked your video and SUBSCRIBED to your channel.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year 2022.
Thanks so much for subscribing - it's great to have you along! A very happy New Year to you also.
Great video! I also throw my ash onto the leaves of my cherry tree to combat pear and cherry slug when they appear
Yay!
Thank you Ben for the video. Gardeners are one of the best recyclers.
We certainly are aren't we!
Great video for knowledge and entertainment. Thank you. I was not aware that I needed to sterilize the egg shells so happy to walk away with some new knowledge. Thanks for your videos I have learned a lot from them.
Hi Dee - only if using them on the soil - otherwise just bung 'em on the compost heap.
Thank you Mr Ben : )