Coffee grounds and pods

It is so very hot that I can barely think. We have had several days of heat and so the house has finally succumbed to it all. But relief is on the way in the form of one of those marvellous Melbourne changes.

So I thought I would do something quick. I'm not quite sure why I thought of recycling coffee grounds but I did. I won't give you all the ideas of what to do with them - just google coffee grounds and you will find dozens. But there were a few that I hadn't come across before that I thought were worth passing on.

I knew about the compost thing, and we do throw our coffee grounds out into the garden. But apparently, specifically, they are really good for things like camellias and roses and they make hydrangeas blue (coffee grounds are acidic I gather). Carrots and radishes also love them as fertiliser. Mix them with the soil when you sow seed. Or just add them to your compost.

However, I did not know that ants, slugs and snails really don't like them - make a circular mound around your precious plants and they won't be attacked. Cats don't like them either particularly if mixed with dried orange peel. But we don't have a cat so I don't really care. There was also a fairly ingenious cockroach trap.

It's a deodoriser - now who would have thought that? After all it has a very distinctive smell. Put a cup or small bowl of them in the back of your fridge and it will take away any smellsl. Scour your pots and pans with it - put it down the drain with hot water and it will unclog it. Counter-intuitive don't you think? Mix with water and paint into cracks and stains on your wooden table and so on and so forth. Skin exfoliant, hair exfoliant and on and on it goes. So next time you are faced with grounds from your coffee machine, filter or plunger at the very least just throw it on the garden.

Coffee pods - more of a problem. Nespresso ones are made of aluminium and are therefore recyclable. That explains the price! You return them to the store. Cheaper ones - well ... Aldi did have a scheme though when I looked at it, it entailed sending it away somewhere so I didn't bother. Not that we use an Expressi machine all that much - only when we have guests staying in our guest house thing. And when I looked at their website it seems they have stopped doing it. They say temporarily whilst they look at a better way - apparently it was just too too popular and they couldn't cope. And people are working on a recyclable, biodegradable container.

But you could do like my lovely husband who just got himself into the used pod somehow and threw away the grounds on the garden. Mind you that didn't mean that the pod got recycled. I gather the cheap ones do not recycle and will most likely end up in landfill. In Australia apparently 3 million pods are used a day - that's an awful lot of pods. So think about that next time you use one - even though it makes nice coffee. At least try and remove the coffee grounds from inside the pod and throw on the garden.

It's a wonderful fertiliser in fact - and you can get free grounds for your garden from some places - IKEA for example, and Starbucks I believe. Just ask.

There are lots of other things you can do with it - just browse the net.

Now an iced coffee would be really nice!