black on green

I have a new source of richness for the garden- coffee grounds! Not just the ones from my household, which are very few, but from several coffehouses in our neighborhood. I've made arrangements to pick up their used grounds twice a week. The first haul was enough to give my recently-uncovered strawberry bed a half inch of soft black mulch. I don't know if any slugs are out yet, but this will certainly keep them away! it's less work than tending beer traps, feeds the plants as well, and smells nice to boot.

I realized it's probably what kept my carrots safe the years before. Last year they got carrot fly (or some other pest) pretty bad, and most were rotted to pieces. The years before I had been scattering our coffee grounds on the carrot bed every week or so. I didn't realize how much good that was doing until I neglected to do it last year, and lost most of my carrots. Read in a gardening book that any strong-smelling herb planted among carrots, like lavender, will keep the pests away, but I bet the black grounds were doing the same job.

I had company while uncovering and re-mulching the Strawberry bed (there were very few weeds). The baby was quite happy to watch from her exer-saucer set nearby on the grass (she's thrown off her hat, of course).