How To Use Recycled Coffee Grounds In Your Garden

Happy Earth Day! In celebration of today, I thought I’d share with you guys how to use recycled coffee grounds in your garden. One of the most common uses for recycled coffee grounds is to add them to your garden. Coffee shops like Starbucks will even give you some of their used coffee grounds for just this purpose. It’s a cheap, easy, and practical way to give back to the earth from which we take – as long as you do it right.

I recently decided I wanted to plant an herb garden and having heard that coffee grounds can be great for gardening, I dug in and did some research on the best way to go about it. From my findings I compiled the below list of helpful tips and need to know advice for using recycled coffee grounds to best advantage in your garden.

1. Not all plants like coffee grounds. Not like coffee? Sacrilege, right? Well, it’s true. Coffee grounds contain some useful minerals for plants like calcium, magnesium, and potassium, but it’s also important to keep in mind that they’re rich in nitrogen and slightly acidic, which not all plants are down for. Coffee grounds work great for nitrogen and acid loving leafy plants such as tomatoes, spinach, blueberries, strawberries, roses, gardenias, azaleas, and evergreens. Check to see if coffee grounds will be beneficial for your particular plants’ needs before adding them.

2. You have to mix it. Like man, sadly plants can not survive on coffee alone. Used coffee grounds makes a great amendment to your garden, but you’re still going to need soil. And water. And possibly some kind of additional fertilizer. There are several ways to incorporate your recycled grounds into your garden. One is to simply mix some used coffee grounds into some water (about 7.5 tablespoons per gallon of water) and use it to water your plants.  Another is to sprinkle some used grounds around the base or your plants before watering to ensure a slow release of nitrogen into the soil. Still another avenue you might want to take is to mix recycled grounds directly into the top most layer of your soil, making sure your ratio of grounds to soil is no more than 1 to 4.

3. They makes fantastic compost material. As stated above, coffee grounds are slightly acidic in nature. Luckily, a lot of their natural acidity is lost during the brewing process, so used coffee grounds are less acidic than new unused grounds. Coffee grounds release nitrogen and continue to become less acidic as they break down, so adding your used coffee grounds to your compost pile is a great way to create nitrogen-rich soil. They’ll also help to stave off bacterial growth and are a favorite among worms.

4. Less is more. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Watering too often or too much with your coffee ground/water mix can cause your plants to become sick or die if conditions become too acidic (look out for yellowing leaves as a sign). If you add too thick a layer of coffee grounds to your garden you run the risk of creating a water barrier to your plants and running into fungal growth. Adding too much directly into the soil can alter the pH in undesirable ways.

5. Not just for growing. Recycled coffee grounds in your garden act as a deterrent against some common garden pests like slugs and snails without having to resort to chemical pesticides. I’ve also heard talk of the addition of fresh, used coffee grounds acting as a deterrent that may stop cats from prowling, and defiling, your beautiful garden.

I hope you guys find some of these tips useful – I know I did! Please share down below your adventures in gardening with recycled coffee and feel free to give us any useful tips or tricks you may have up your sleeves.

Sources Used:
Plants & Shrubs That Like Coffee Grounds
Are Coffee Grounds Good For Plants?
Coffee as Plant Food
Use Your Coffee Grounds in Potting Soil!
Diluted Coffee For Plants: Can You Water Plants With Coffee