Tea leaves

bouicca21

Following all that publicity about tea bags containing plastic, I have switched to old fashioned leaves.

Since I often put a slice of lemon in the pot, I'm not sure whether I should feed the used leaves to my worms (apparently they don't like citrus). Over the winter they slow down anyway, so even when I don't use lemon I have masses of used leaves to dispose of (I drink a lot of tea).

Can I put the used leaves straight on the garden?

silverwhistle

I have no idea if worms really don't like citrus (though have heard this elsewhere) but I chuck citrus peel on my compost heap and it's absolutely heaving with brandlings.


It's a decent size heap for my garden so perhaps the worms can move around a bit, but it's never seemed an issue to me.

Farway

I chuck my leaves directly onto the garden and leave the worms, wind & rain to sort them out

like SW I've heard the citrus & worms bit, but also never found it a problem, maybe it all depends on the amount?

LessImpecunious

I think the citrus problem was thought relevant for people using wormeries/ worm bins where small quantities were being composted in an enclosed environment by worm colonies (mainly for "worm wee"), and most of the ingredients added were kitchen/household waste, where citrus could more easily make up a high percentage - and not a problem for ordinary outdoor composting with lots of garden waste...

bouicca21

My worms are in a wormery. there wouldn't be a lot of citrus - just a slice of two that had been in the pot and thus effectively juiced. I suppose I could rinse the tea leaves of any remaining juice???

-taff

Tea leaves are good for houseplants, and you can just chuck them round the base of any other plant. The lemon, it will take longer to break down so I'd be chucking it behind a bush/puting it in with the worms/digging small holes and using each of these methods, not just one.

savemoney

Yorkshire Tea have launched t-bags that arent made of plastic its currently only certain products so far


https://www.yorkshiretea.co.uk/brew-news/our-use-of-plastic