Your Morning Coffee and Your Plants

Morning is here and you are enjoying your first cup of coffee. As you sip the first delicious taste you realize that you are going to be late and this will be it for your coffee at this point. The day goes on and when you arrive at home you find that there are five cups of coffee still sitting in the pot from the hectic morning rush.

I suggest that you take the left coffee and put it in your watering can with the water that you use to take care of all those Christmas cactus that you have started, I hope! I am sure that some of you buy plant fertilizer regularly for all of your favorite plants which can become expensive over time.

Plant fertilizer, in general, is to help replenish nutrients in the soil that the plant uses to stay healthy. There are many varieties out there and many are no more than stimulants to make the plant look larger and greener and not really have any root system. As with anything, such as a house or your health, if you don’t have a good foundation you will not have a healthy body or home.

Plants need to have a good root system long before they can be big, beautiful and colorful. The best fertilizers are natural things that we find in our home every day. As we look at the coffee pot, tea pot that is half full of old coffee or tea, think about what you look forward to when you drink your first cup in the morning. The coffee or tea has some natural effects to it, one is stimulation, and the other is minerals that are found in the leaves and beans used to make the coffee or tea.

Starting today take the coffee pot or tea pot and fill it with water until the pot is full. Now, take that pot and use it to water your plants. You don’t need to do it every day, unless you have as many plants as I do. Once a week, you can use this concoction to water with instead of straight water or fertilized water if you have only a few plants. The good thing for me is the ritual. Each day my morning starts with taking the old coffee and water mixture to my sunroom to water. I start at one end and when I finish that is where I start the next morning. This helps me make sure that I don’t overwater any one plant but that they have enough water to rest for the winter months.

My caution to all of you is that plants go into dormancy during the winter months the same as any of us do. At this time of year, it is very easy to overwater the plants in your care. Just remember that they are not doing much growing at this time of year and if they are it is false growth and should be curtailed by slowing down the watering schedule. There are a few exceptions to this. If you have orchids this is the time of year for some of them to bloom. If you have had them outside during the summer, they are setting buds to bloom early in the spring. However, they still do not need to be watered too often. Orchids are parasitic by nature and in their natural habitat live on a host which is why there feet should be in plant matter such as orchid bark or moss.

I have gotten away from the topic, big surprise! So, make sure that you use your old coffee and tea as watering supplement and you will see results over the winter. Always, remember to keep your plants drier during the winter while they are resting. If leaves are turning brown it is because of the dry heat so just put a bowl of water near them or put some stones in a bowl and keep it full of water. If your plants start to turn yellow than you have watered too much. Just let them dry out before watering again. They will drop some of their leaves but will recover as long as you let them dry out some before watering again.

I wish all of you a very Healthy and Happy New Year.  When things look like they are falling apart, take a good look at your gifts and talents and smile. These things will get you through the worst of times and when the good times come store some of those things in your memory for a rainy day.