MadSci Network: Botany
Query:

Re: tea leaves,fruit peels,coffee grounds which grows faster on a tomato plant

Date: Tue Dec 3 19:29:34 2002
Posted By: David Hershey, Faculty, Botany, NA
Area of science: Botany
ID: 1038666499.Bt
Message:

You don't have to worry about getting the "correct results." The reason we do 
experiments is to answer questions we don't know the answers to. I wouldn't be 
able to predict what your results would be. 

It may boil down to the differing mineral nutrient contents of the tea leaves, 
orange peel and coffee grounds. But that assumes your potting soil is deficient 
in mineral nutrients, and you didn't apply sufficient fertilizer. It would also 
depend on how much of the organic substances you added. If you added very 
little, it may have not been enough to make a difference. Your results could 
also depend on how long you grew the plants and how you evaluated plant growth, 
such as height, leaf number or weight. Height is not always a good measure of 
plant growth. Poorly growing plants may be taller than heavier, healthier 
plants. 

Were the orange peels ground as fine as the tea and coffee grounds? The smaller 
they are, the faster they might be decomposed by microbes and release their 
mineral nutrients. Did you use the same dry weight of each organic material per 
pot?

Coffee grounds are used for fertilizer and websites say they contain about 4% 
nitrogen, 1% phosphorus and 3% potassium on a dry weight basis plus small 
amounts of other essential mineral nutrients. There is even a Grow Joe 
fertilizer that contains neutralized coffee grounds. The Grow Joe website notes 
that fresh coffee grounds are very acidic so may harm plants. You might want to 
test their pH. 

Tea leaves would also be a decent source of mineral nutrients because leaves 
contain fairly high concentrations of mineral nutrients. One website says tea 
leaves contain 4.5% nitrogen, 0.32% phosphorus and 0.76% potassium. It did not 
mention if that was before or after brewing. Some mineral nutrients, such as 
potassium, are water soluble so some might be partially lost in brewing. Orange 
peels would likely have substantially lower mineral nutrient concentrations. 

Other chemicals may have some effect, such as caffeine in tea and coffee. Tea 
also contains substantial flourine, which is often toxic to plants. However, a 
lot of the caffeine and flourine might be lost during brewing too.

References

Coffee grounds as fertilizer:
http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles/nyerges44.html
http://www.rebeccasgarden.com/tips/items/coffeecompost.asp

Grow Joe Fertilizer:
http://growjoeplantfood.com/coffee.html

Tea leaf mineral composition:
http://w3.trib.com/~kombu/FAQ/part01a.html#BM132t



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