It’s another Sunday night, and I am, as usual, doing what I am always doing at this hour on a Sunday night … finishing the laundry. I’ll never learn to start it earlier. I might as well just accept the inevitable and get on with my late-night laundry doing.

Since I have to stay awake a bit longer to wait for the last load in the dryer to finish up, I have been reading about natural fertilizers. I know the plants that aren’t doing well need more nutrients. I don’t want to spend a bunch of money on an organic solution to the problem, and I really don’t want to spend any money on a chemical and non-organic solution to the problem. I was just about ready to break down and buy Miracle Grow tomorrow, but then I decided there had to be some household thing we have plenty of that would be natural and organic and work just as well. And … of course … there is.

Coffee grounds. More here.

Coffee grounds are an excellent fertilizing mulch, and apparently also good at repelling snails and slugs (even, joy of joys, possibly killing them). Well, we have the coffee grounds. Some of them get tossed on the compost heap, but admittedly, most of them just get thrown away. Not any more! Tomorrow, all used coffee grounds go out to my plants. Any leftover brewed coffee can be too, though there usually isn’t much of that around.

Also, crushed egg shells mixed with the dirt, at planting or worked in later, add calcium. This reputedly helps protect against Blossom End Rot on tomatoes and gives them a growing boost. Sprinkling the eggs shells around plants can help deter slugs, snails, and cutworms, who don’t want to crawl over them, as well as deterring those pesky neighborhood cats who want to pee and dig in flowerbeds. They don’t like stepping on them either, or so the rumor goes. Eggshells have all sorts of uses. Just so happens, I have a whole bunch of clean, dry, and crushed up eggshells I was hoarding for that canvas and then decided not to use. How convenient for me!

Tomatoes also seem to love milk, and it may combat powdery mildew.

And finally, here are some ideas for natural pesticides, which I am sure to be needing eventually as well.

Laundry is done. Time for folding it up and then … bed.