Tea Leaves/Bags in Gardening

Sainsbury's and Asda have PG Tips loose tea. Asda also has Yorkshire.

 

http://www.which.co.uk/news/2010/07/composting-teabags-218651/

 

Yep, tea bags effect for mulching acid lovers. Been doing that for years. Bags do rot down but I try to empty them if possible because appearance is better. One warning though...in containers be careful not to overmulch azaleas, etc. the roots do not like being buried too deeply. surplus bags can mulch most everything or go into compost heap.

 

Earthworms like coffee,according to an article I read couple of years ago by Monty Don. So much so, that I was liberally ringing my plants in the borders with it, looked at the lawn and realised it had 100s and 100s of worm casts, so many it was unsightly.

 

I read an article somewhere about which brands were still using natural materials. So I expect there is a mix of synthetic / natural. The net-grid pf the synthetic ones is very fine, so not that easy to detect once the compost heap has rotted down.

 

We don't use supermarkets very often these days so that's not really an option in my case. All our food shopping comes from either the local butcher, the greengrocer or the farm shop (which is not one of the trendy new farm shops, its a farm where one of the sheds has a till in it, staffed by the farmer's missus ). Sundry stuff like bread, milk and margarine comes from the corner shop, and Ringtons deliver our tea. No need for supermarkets very often. Still that's ok, according to Ringtons website they do have a range of sensibly priced non-trendy loose tea options.

 

Grow your own tea then C1?

The process is as follows:

1. Buy winning lottery ticket
2. Buy a Tea plantation in a former colony like India
3. Live the life of Riley Lording it up over there ...
...
999. Drink you own home-grown tea

 

Go for this then people and see that we can do things right

http://www.englishtea.org.uk/

 

A man of my own heart!
S/markets are still a necessity though, but I do try to by only items that are on offer as many are just loss leaders anyway.

All my tea bags hit the compost, but the bags do seem to take ages to break down. Most seem to get ripped as a part of turning the compost over however.

 

I've noticed mould growing on teabags before tearing them open. I've left them out too long before adding them to the compost bin/wormery. Is this the tea breaking down inside the bag or the bag breaking down?

I've always torn mine open, but when you have 800 to do, I would rather chuck them all in in one go personally. Is there really that much plastic on the tea bag that the tea inside won't rot then?

 

Actually I don't drink any tea or coffee. The place I volunteer at has a cafe which roughly uses 800 tea bags a week. They have been giving me their coffee grounds but am now thinking of taking their teabags, but don't really want to be ripping up 800 of them a week.