For everything a use

[french frank]

I've often wondered, dear weeders, whether any use could be made of my piles of pistachio shells. I could only think of chucking them into the veggie stockpot for a soup and stew base but I wasn't sure there was much nutrition to be extracted from them. The answer is: An Organic Slug Deterrent. Scatter them round the kind of plants which slugs find tasty - in my garden hellebores and hostas. I had been 'shelling' out for a proprietary alternative used in exactly the same way - as a barrier.

https://www.ruralsprout.com/pistachio-shells/

[gradus]

Looks like it could work well unfortunately we rarely eat Pistachios and other nuts we eat tend to be ready shelled. Our late lamented walnut tree would have been a considerable source of material had I the wit to have realised that I could have put the shells to use.

[french frank]

Looks like it could work well unfortunately we rarely eat Pistachios and other nuts we eat tend to be ready shelled. Our late lamented walnut tree would have been a considerable source of material had I the wit to have realised that I could have put the shells to use.

I read something about the benefits of nuts and seeds as supplements to veggies and fruit, and I weighed up whether the Coop pistachios in shells would be better value than the shelled ones and decided they would. So I started eating a few pistachios each day and was perplexed as to what might be usefully done with the shells which were mounting up alarmingly. Now I know. And I find I like pistachios too

[teamsaint]

I read something about the benefits of nuts and seeds as supplements to veggies and fruit, and I weighed up whether the Coop pistachios in shells would be better value than the shelled ones and decided they would. So I started eating a few pistachios each day and was perplexed as to what might be usefully done with the shells which were mounting up alarmingly. Now I know. And I find I like pistachios too

Bit pricey, but if it saves on slug pellets ( and lets face it, its bloody difficult to hit the little b*****s with those pellets anyway) and you get a yummy snack out of it, then whats not to like ?
Love them myself, though they can, like the ubiquitous avocado, be unreliable.
I’m in. Great tip, FF.

[AuntDaisy]

Bit pricey, but if it saves on slug pellets ( and lets face it, its bloody difficult to hit the little b*****s with those pellets anyway) and you get a yummy snack out of it, then whats not to like ?
Love them myself, though they can, like the ubiquitous avocado, be unreliable.
I’m in. Great tip, FF.

Brilliant - that's cheered me up no end.

Thanks for the tip FF. The slugs have already had most of my marigold seedlings!

[oddoneout]

National Pistachio Day - shouldn't really be a surprise I suppose. https://agnetwest.com/recycle-pistachio-shells/
This also mentions the issue of salt, which would enhance any anti-mollusc effect; at domestic post-consumer scale the amount involved would be unlikely to cause problems for the plants or soil. When I went through a stage of eating a lot of said nibbles I used to just put the shells in the compost and they seemed to break down reasonably well, although obviously took a bit longer than the general garden waste, so if I could be bothered I gathered them up after spreading the compost and chucked them back for another turn, otherwise just left them to rot in situ.
Not so easy to get the quantities but perhaps the pistachio alternative removes the problem of toxicity to dogs that cocoa shell has.
The thought of putting them in a veggie stockpot made me shudder a bit I'm afraid; I'm always wary of such outer coverings primarily because of the chemical residue/concentration issue (eg can't bring myself to be enthusiastic about the current banana skin craze) but also I would want to be certain that they don't contain "natural" components that could be problematic. Plants have developed mechanisms for dispersing their seeds that may not work for humans - hence cashews being naked and steamed for instance.

[french frank]

The thought of putting them in a veggie stockpot made me shudder a bit I'm afraid

Bit of an empiricist, me. If something doesn't work, I don't do it again. I have a dry stockpot where I throw in cauiflower stems, apple cores, carrot and radish leaves, almost anything that would otherwise go raw into into the food waste bin (never fancied using banana skins though). Plus any odd carrots &c which are past their best. Add a stock cube and boil the hell out of it all, then strain and throw away yukky solids. Then the liquor makes a wet stockpot into which I throw … as before. When I'm making a soup or stew, that's the liquid I use.

I used to just bury the fresh cast-off bits and let them rot down naturally but decided that wasn't a good idea. Something to do with nitrogen but I've forgotten what.

Yep, shout-out for team's joke about slug pellets I think I paid about £7 for a box of Slug Stop.

[Serial_Apologist]

Bit of an empiricist, me. If something doesn't work, I don't do it again. I have a dry stockpot where I throw in cauiflower stems, apple cores, carrot and radish leaves, almost anything that would otherwise go raw into into the food waste bin (never fancied using banana skins though). Plus any odd carrots &c which are past their best. Add a stock cube and boil the hell out of it all, then strain and throw away yukky solids. Then the liquor makes a wet stockpot into which I throw … as before. When I'm making a soup or stew, that's the liquid I use.

I used to just bury the fresh cast-off bits and let them rot down naturally but decided that wasn't a good idea. Something to do with nitrogen but I've forgotten what.

Have you ever been near it with a Geiger counter?

[oddoneout]

Have you ever been near it with a Geiger counter?

Or a mass spectrometer

[french frank]

Have you ever been near it with a Geiger counter?

Or a mass spectrometer

As I say, if it doesn't work out, I stop doing it. One way or another