tea bags

red john

can any Pearson tell me can you put tea bags on borders or do they cause ants

Dovefromabove

No they won't cause ants - I put them in my compost bin and spread the resulting compost on the borders - the bags are not totally biodegradable nowadays as most of them are not made totally of paper.

Lynda T

I empty the tea leaves from the bags before I put them in the compost bin. Otherwise you end up with the bags in the finished compost. Not very attractive and not so good for wild life.

Pentillie

You can spray them with Radox and bury them just under the surface of the soil - a great deterrent if you have cats using your borders as a loo!

Lyn

That should be Ralgex spray!

flowering rose

they dont attract ants but just put them in the compost bin .

Tomsk

Is there any easy way to tell whether your tea bags are all-paper?

I've been throwing them in whole for a couple of years now, wnd when I turn it periodically they all seem to have burst open, though there are have rotted bits of bag. Maybe that's whatever isn't paper?

As an aside, I stopped putting loo role tubes in because they seem to take forever to degrade. Almost as long as cranberries!

Gardening Grandma

Tea bags marufactured to remain whole when soaked in boiling water and so none of them biodegrade very easily. I usually break them up and bury them when I'm using the compost and they do seem to have disapeared when I dig the soil again.

Pentillie

Thanks Lyn! The cats in our road are the cleanest in town!

 

 

 

 

HOLEDIGGER

I have used teabags in compost bins, bottom of pots.....helps with water retention, straight on the garden , bags broken or left whole, and any left over tea use to water acid loving plants. go on be a devil.