DENVER — While the internet can be a valuable learning tool, it also can spread bad or even ridiculous gardening advice.
For example, you'll see ice cream cones and egg shells promoted for starting seeds. These are bad ideas.
The cones collapse the minute they get wet. Even if they survived long enough to plant them, the flour and sugar just invite insects and rodents.
The eggs are silly to begin with since recyclable plastic cell packs are so readily available. Yet the online sources claim that the shells are providing calcium for growing plants.
Not only is calcium widely available in the soil in our state but for it to be available to plant roots, the egg shells must break down to the molecular level.
This is also true when it comes to putting coffee grounds on houseplants. Plants can't use caffeine. Nor can they derive any sort of nutritive value from the ground beans until they've decomposed.
Decomposition happens in a compost pile with heat and bacteria. It's not going to happen in your living room.
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