Chucking stuff in the garden

June 25, 2020 1:11 PM

I throw our coffee grounds in the vegetable garden as a cheap fertilizer/pest repellent. Can I do the same thing with tea leaves?

I've been making more iced tea (from loose leaf) since it's gotten warm, and so I've been generating a lot of used tea leaves. Since we do bulk quantities of cold brew coffee, I had gotten in the habit of emptying the coffee grounds from making a quart or so of concentrate straight in the vegetable garden. Can I do the same thing with the used tea, or am I encouraging birds and other pests to peck at them and otherwise do bad things to my plants?

posted by backseatpilot to Home & Garden (10 answers total)

It shouldn't do bad things- but coffee and tea are acidic as fertilizers go- so some plants will like that more than others. Most Veggies prefer alkaline soil (not all tho!)
posted by Homo neanderthalensis at 1:22 PM on June 25, 2020 [3 favorites]

Can I do the same thing with the used tea

Yes you can. Used tea is essentially leaf litter. It makes an excellent mulch.
posted by flabdablet at 1:42 PM on June 25, 2020 [3 favorites]

"Tea leaves can benefit the garden year-round, but the best application method differs depending on the timing. During the active growing season -- usually in summer -- you should apply tea leaves as mulch or add them to a separate compost pile to give them time to decompose. You don't want to directly incorporate them into the soil as compost then, because you may disturb growing plant roots. You can safely work fresh tea leaves into the soil at other times of the year, when plants are resting or dormant."
posted by Iris Gambol at 2:47 PM on June 25, 2020

Nah, it's fine, I do the same. I do try to avoid pouring it directly on plants or stems though.

Not for any reason I could argue for or against.

In any case, it hasn't killed anything.
posted by A Terrible Llama at 2:58 PM on June 25, 2020

Like coffee grounds, they're better if actually composted (which could be as simple as letting a bucket of them rot for a month). I've been told by reliable sources that it's a good idea to mix some sand and topsoil in with tannin-heavy compost, and so far that has proven pretty productive.
posted by aspersioncast at 4:25 PM on June 25, 2020

People grow ornamental camellia bushes. I have an ornamental camellia japonica bush (tea is camellia sinensis) and there are plants growing under it just fine.
posted by aniola at 4:37 PM on June 25, 2020

I throw at least two tablespoons of tea leaves per day outside my kitchen door onto the following unkillable perennials: bearded iris, coneflower, coreopsis, tiger lily, and baptista. This is going on 8 years. This year I also snuck an extra tomato plant into the space, and it has not died yet.
posted by Maarika at 4:42 PM on June 25, 2020

Heck, I have a Camellia sinensis bush and plants grow under it just fine. Too well, I need to weed it.
posted by clew at 5:01 PM on June 25, 2020 [1 favorite]

The caveats people are listing here crack me up--I drink a lot of tea, and I save up and dump the leaves in everything from my raspberry boxes to my succulent ground covers, and I've never had any problems. They have worked excellently in the raspberry canes, in fact. I suppose if you were dumping giant barrels full of tea leaves, it might be different, but I don't think general consumption quantities will hurt anything. And acid-loving plants like rhodies and azaleas, and obviously camellias, will be very happy.
posted by kitten kaboodle at 7:10 PM on June 25, 2020

I do try to avoid pouring it directly on plants or stems though.

Not for any reason I could argue for or against.

Generally a good idea to keep a bit of an air gap around plant stems when adding thick new mulch, to avoid promoting the conditions for rot. The same organisms you want to encourage into the mulch to break it down and eventually incorporate it into the soil can also do a bit of a number on bark, given time and damp and opportunity.
posted by flabdablet at 11:03 PM on June 25, 2020 [1 favorite]