helping in the garden

 Autumn is  my favorite time in the garden, and I think Peppa is also enjoying her first autumn in this world. Here she is helping us install the new wormery tower under one of the apple trees. 

 

Some household members seem to think the new wormery is too colorful, but I love it. Here's hoping the worms enjoy coming and going through the holes under the soil. I was thinking of using it to process pet poo, but after a little research I decided to go with my reservations, as it's in an area where we grow food. I still think the only thing we can do with Peppa's poo at this stage is put it in bags and drop it in the rubbish bin.

One site I looked at suggested putting it in the household toilet and flushing it like human waste. I'm not sure about that either. On the other hand, it would save on plastic bags going to landfill.

dogs and coffee grounds

Because I'm a keen gardener, I was thrilled yesterday to find a cafe that allowed me to take home a big bag of coffee grounds after I ate there. I intended to put them around my blueberries, azaleas and camellias. I've read that they're really good for the soil in general, but that it can also be good to put them through a composting process first.

But...

I put the bag on the back patio and soon afterwards Penny got up from her snoozing mat in the house and went out to investigate the nice smell.

Hmmm... This might need a bit of investigating...
I decided to look on the Net for info about dogs and coffee grounds.

And it looks like it would not be a good idea to lay them on the garden beds out the back where Penny can wander at will. I'll have to mix them into the compost pile, or the wormeries (three of them) or put some in the Bokashi bins (five of them), before adding them to my soil.

Here's a site with info about dogs and coffee grounds. And this is what PetPoisonHelpline says:

Pets are more sensitive to the effects of caffeine than people are. While 1-2 laps of coffee, tea or soda will not contain enough caffeine to cause poisoning in most pets, the ingestion of moderate amounts of coffee grounds, tea bags or 1-2 diet pills can easily cause death in small dogs or cats.

I'll use the grounds neat on the camellias and azaleas, because Penny doesn't have free access to the front yard.