Marianne's Response

Cold coffee for acid-loving vegetables

I live in Northern California, where we have rainy winters and at least a week or so of frost around the end of December. Our summers (like now) have an average of 92, and up to 104, degrees of heat. My vegetable and herb garden is mostly in containers, and I like to use organic fertilizers (homemade compost tea) and pest remedies (pure dish soap & water, or a healthy strong spray from my sprinkler hose) as much as possible. I always test each container’s moisture by sticking my finger into the soil, and then I water by hand as needed. When I used automatic sprinklers before, I always lost a lot of plants by overwatering.

Question 1: Can I feed acid-loving vegetables my left-over brewed cold coffee? I already put the coffee grounds in my compost pile.

Question 2: Why do green tomatoes wrapped in plain newspaper ripen and turn red? What’s in the paper that will cause that?

P.S. I just discovered PlantersPlace and I LOVE IT, especially your advice column. Thank you for sharing.

Posted by on June 28, 2014

Marianne's Response

Welcome and thank you for finding the site. Yes, you can pour cold coffee on your acid-loving veggies, but only about once a week. You don't want them getting the jitters. The newspaper does not make green tomatoes ripen. It just keeps them from rotting so they can ripen on their own. They will also ripen on a windowsill or table top as long as they are not touching each other. Tomatoes need a set number of heat days to turn from green to red. You can tell when they have reached this point by looking for the dark green star on the blossom end of the lighter green fruit. If you harvest before the star or before they have had enough heat days, your green tomatoes will be too immature to turn red no matter what you do. Keep growing, Marianne Binetti P.S. Thanks for the photo. Your garden is lovely.

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