Your Questions About Gardening

GardenersCardiff answers:

Spinach is an easy grower that can be grown with the other vegetables, preferably early spring or fall during somewhat cooler weather. Good natural fertilizers are coffee grounds, earthworms love em, eggshells for calcium, grass clippings, leaves or any other vegetable bits that are left over from cooking etc.,some people work this into the soil some people just lay in the rows to get worked down in the soil by rain or worms.Adding compost or other safe fertilizers, lots of love and the attention to pulling weeds.Gardens dont like to be neglected,oh and a little box of miracle grow is always good.Good luck.

GardenersCardiff answers:

Starbucks doesn’t “grow” their own beans. They purchase them and roast them.

Casi Cielo and Guatemala Antigua are both Latin American, so they are bought from the Latin American region.

Where as Kenya is from Africa, and Ethiopian Sidamo would be Ethiopia. Etc.

There as multi-regional blends as well. Next time you buy a pound of coffee, look at the back of the package, it will present you with a map of the world and the location where the beans are bought from will be highlighted.

GardenersCardiff answers:

I buy green coffee and roast my own. Both are very environmentally friendly up to a point.

Small coffee growers utilize very little gas, as much of the coffee is hand picked. Coffee requires very minor care as it’s grown where the environment is perfect for it, so no extra irrigation is used.

Costa Rica is the exception. They use a new type of coffee plant that grows well in direct sunlight & produces 3x the beans. Due to no need for shade, they cut down more forests & require irrigation. This causes soil erosion and river pollution that other coffee growers don’t. That (and the probable change of taste) is why I won’t buy coffee from Costa Rica.

Darker teas require more processing, which is slightly more environmentally negative. Since most teas sold are of the black variety, tea (as a whole) is no more friendly than most coffees.

I’m a coffee lover, but I guess I’ll have to give a (very) slight edge to tea for environmentalism (more for green & white teas). Plus, there’s a lot more coffee produced, so you have to include fuel effects from all the extra transport required.