If you’re pondering what to do with your leftover lemons or lemon peel, don’t bin them. Gardening gurus suggest there are three major benefits to using it in your garden. Food waste is a colossal problem in Britain. In fact, a shocking 9.52 million tonnes of food is wasted in the UK every year. Some causes of this include bulk buying, reluctance to eat odd-shaped fruit, not consuming produce before its best-before date, and a lack of knowledge about how to use food waste in the garden.
Many different foods can be used to boost your garden’s growth. These include coffee grounds, egg shells, vegetable peelings and leftover fruit. By combining these wasted items together and allowing them to decompose, you can create compost. Compost is a natural, soil-enriching material that provides plants with nutrients, reports the Mirror.
While you can buy compost from gardening centres or online, there are advantages to making your own. It can save you money and also reduce your household waste.
Another advantage is that you can customise your compost to your soil type. For instance, some plants require more alkaline soil, while others prefer acidic.
Azaleas, hydrangeas, and gardenias are common plants that flourish in acidic environments. Similarly, cranberries and blueberries are two fruits that also benefit from acidic soil.
The gardening gurus at Mimea have dropped a handy green-fingered tip for those looking to enhance their soil: “Some plants favour more acidic soils. Lemon peel can be used to alter the acidity of your soil, improving the health of your plants.”
The reason is quite simple – lemons are rich in citric acid, thus increasing the amount of lemon peel in your soil boosts its acidity level.
Mimea added: “They’re rich in all kinds of valuable nutrients, including essential vitamins and minerals that plants need to thrive.”
As they decompose within your compost pile, these nutrients integrate with the other organic matter, ready to nourish your garden once fully broken down and spread over the beds.
Moreover, if creepy crawlies cause you strife, Mimea highlights a third benefit: lemon peel doubles as an excellent pest deterrent. The fresh aroma we adore appears to have the opposite effect on many insects and rodents.
On a brighter note, butterflies are major fans of the citrus scent, so sprinkling lemon peel in your garden could result in a flurry of fluttering guests.
