I would crush them, disolve them in water (to the extent that they would disolve) and water the pile with the solution.

How far out of date? They may still be OK for their original use. Drug manufacturers build a huge margin in. The worst that could happen is they may have lost some potency.

Well, I already bought more (which I will probably also forget to take -- LOL). They expired in April 2007, two big bottles of 200 pills each. I just wondered if the plants would be able to use the nutrients even if I couldn't.

Well, the plants probably won't need 'em, but possibly some of the bugs and microbes might. At the very least, they'll get broken down and reused for something else.

Put them in whole and figure the moisture in the pile would be enough to break them down.

Are there minerals or only vitamins? Minerals wouldn't expire and would still be useful. Vitamins I don't know.

Thanks for the advice, everyone. I think I'm going to try putting them in whole and see what happens. Even though they are just a few months out of date, I do have about 400 of them, so at the recommended dose (one-a-day, hey guess what brand they are?) if I kept them by the time I finished taking them it would be Fall 2008.

Use them whole in the compost or scattered around the flowers. They'll disapper with rain.

Can't do any harm and certainly better than land-filling them.

Those vitamins are great for your plants!!

An excellent (albeit expensive) way to replenish the micronutrients in your soil. Personally, I would crush them up a bit and spread them all over the compost, water in well so it get's through all the layers.

If they are that good, good for micronutrients why not put them right in the beds where the plants could make use of them?

If you water with a can, even better.

My compost won't see plants until next year!!

Back in college, my girlfriend (now wife) did an experiment in her Bio class which showed that vitamin E increased plant root cell growth. Granted, that was just an undergraduate research paper, a far cry from a peer reviewed doctoral thesis. But the results were pretty convincing. I always told her she should repeat the experiment and publish it, as it might be an important discovery, but for one reason or another she never did.

-Diggity

Well thats nifty! Im going to pop a vit E into the pineapple Ive been trying to get to root.

:)