Coffee Grounds for your Garden

Coffee is a great source of organic matter. Coffee grounds can make your garden happier in several ways. So, don’t toss the grounds! You can put them to work in your garden.

Coffee in Compost

Put coffee grounds in your compost bin. There are two types of compost material: brown and green. Your coffee grounds may be brown in colour, but in compost jargon they are green material, meaning an item that is rich in nitrogen. Coffee grounds are approximately 1.45 percent nitrogen. They also contain magnesium, calcium, potassium, and other trace minerals. Other green compost materials include food scraps and grass clippings.

Adding coffee grounds and used paper coffee filters to your compost will provide green compost material. However, it must be balanced with brown compost material, which includes dry leaves and newspapers. There should be a 4-to-1 ratio of brown compost material to green compost material. If you have too much green material your compost pile will start to smell. If you don’t have enough, the compost pile won’t heat up.

Fertilise your garden with Coffee Grounds

Add coffee grounds directly to the soil in your garden. You can put it into the top couple inches of soil, or just sprinkle the grounds on top and leave it alone. In smaller amounts, especially when mixed with dry materials, coffee grounds will give up their nitrogen. Used coffee grounds are actually nearly neutral in pH, so they shouldn’t cause concerns about their acidity. Be careful not to use too many coffee grounds or pile them up. The small particles can lock together, creating a water resistant barrier in your garden.

You can also make coffee ground “tea.” Add 2 cups of used coffee grounds to a 5 litre bucket of water. Let the “tea” steep for a few hours or overnight. You can use this concoction as a liquid fertilizer for garden and container plants. It also makes a great foliar feed you can spray directly on the leaves and stems of your plants.

Feed Your Worms

Add coffee grounds to your worm bin every week or so. Worms love coffee grounds! Just don’t add too many at once, because the acidity could bother your worms. A cup or so of grounds per week for a small worm bin is perfect. In addition to using coffee grounds in your worm bin, earthworms in your soil will also be more attracted to your garden when you use them mixed with the soil as fertilizer.

Fresh Coffee Grounds for Acid-Loving Plants

While used coffee grounds are only slightly acidic, fresh (unbrewed) coffee grounds have more acid. Your acid-loving plants like hydrangeas, rhododendrons, azaleas, lily of the valley,  carrots, and radishes can get a boost from fresh grounds. However, tomatoes do not like fresh coffee grounds; keep them out of that area of the garden. This could be a good use for coffee that is getting old in your kitchen pantry

Better soil drainage:

It helps in better soil drainage and there will be no problem of water stagnation when you apply coffee grounds to the soil.

As a mulch:

You can even use coffee grounds as a mulch to maintain the moisture level that is being lost in plants during summer. So there by it maintains the soil temperature and helps in better root growth.

It keeps slugs and snails away from the plant

Slugs and snails hate the smell of coffee. There by it keeps them away and protects your garden being damaged by them.

For micro greens

You can even use this coffee grounds for micro greens to enrich its nutrient content.

Plant lovers, it’s truly time to wake up and smell the coffee!

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