Is there anything more gratifying than a beautiful garden when you just happen to be the gardener? But one trip to the garden center to pick up soil amendment, weed cloth, and weedkiller can pretty much zap all of that joy with its hefty price tag.
Garden Vitamins
While you may have no use for spent coffee grounds, your garden will love them. Used coffee grounds are like megavitamins for the soil. They’re rich in phosphorus and magnesium—important nutrients that help plants grow. It’s easy to just sprinkle coffee grounds (wet or dry) around the plants and work them into the soil. They’re even the right color.If you’re not much of a coffee drinker, don’t despair. Many coffee shops package up their used coffee grounds in the bags that the beans originally came in and offer them to local gardeners for free. Check with your barista to see if used coffee grounds are available at your favorite coffeehouse.
Free Calcium
Every day, you throw away eggshells, and why not? They’re not good for anything, right? Wrong! Eggshells are delicious calcium for your garden. Be sure to crush them well, and then work them into the soil right along with those coffee grounds. Calcium will help keep your garden soil and plants healthy.
Weed ‘Cloth’
Newspaper makes the best weed cloth (only after you’ve read this column). It’s free, and it allows water to drain through it, and it is also biodegradable—very good for the soil. Newspaper will definitely last through the season, preventing unwanted vegetation from growing up through it.Weedkiller for Areas to Be Replanted
If you have weeds in areas you want to replant, do this: Fill an ordinary garden sprayer with white vinegar, and add about one teaspoon of liquid dishwashing soap such as blue Dawn. Apply sprayer top, and follow the instructions on the sprayer to get it ready to spray. That’s it. Seriously, it is that simple.Pick a hot, dry day to spray weeds until saturated. They will wilt and shrivel up within hours, so be careful to not spray anything you want to live.
However, do not worry about the vinegar killing anything below the soil. Because vinegar will not harm the soil, you can safely replant the area once the weeds have died.
Weedkiller for Areas Never to Grow Again
To kill all vegetation in walkways, driveways, and other areas where you don’t want any living thing to grow again, mix two cups of ordinary table salt with one gallon of white vinegar. Do this in a container that is larger than one gallon so you have room for the table salt (not Epsom salts, which are a soil nutrient found in lots of garden fertilizers).Apply the lid, and shake to dissolve the salt. Salt dissolves more quickly in vinegar than in water, but it takes a bit of shaking. It may not completely dissolve, but that’s OK. Add one teaspoon of liquid dishwashing soap. Pour into any kind of garden sprayer or spray bottle; make sure to avoid including any undissolved salt, which can clog the sprayer.
Notes
Ordinary distilled white vinegar with 5 percent acidity (the kind you find in the supermarket) is cheap and works great. If you can find a higher acidity, even up to 30 percent (available at Home Depot, Walmart, and Amazon for about $2 for a half-gallon), it’s going to work faster, but the end results will be the same.It is the presence of salt in the second recipe above that will eventually bring permanence to your weedkilling. The salt will penetrate and leach into the soil. It may take multiple applications, but in time, the salt will “sterilize” the soil in this area so that nothing will grow there for the foreseeable future. Plan well before you go this permanent route.
