Coffee, the great american obsession, and your garden will love you too
Also this families obsession, as you may have read earlier about our Coffee Shrine , but it is a goodie for the garden too. The amount of coffee I roast and we consume has put me in the rich for coffee grounds.
I use the spare water of rinsing the grounds before the brew to water my house plants. I use the grounds themselves to top the soil in my house plants and slightly fork it in the first 1-2 inches to prevent the usual compaction issues. Also dump them in the garden, along with the paper that we shred straight and work it in, usually done in the afternoon the day before they are due to be spray watered. And to my modest compost pile I add the grounds, it increases the temp and speeds up the process.
Also I recently found a wonderful blog Ground to Ground where I found out even more garden goodies for coffee grounds.
Apparently earth worms love coffee grounds, mmm another coffee addict. Here is a great article from Ground to Ground concerning coffee in the garden, with great photos. A must read for any coffee lover, who finds themselves swimming in coffee grounds and not wanting to waste the wonderful black gold that is being produced in abundance.
Though everyone states that coffee grounds repels cats, so far I have not seen any evidence concerning that. At our current we have a few howlers, and they have not decreased their activity or avoided my garden. Also my two troublemakers, Darius and Ruffas are always bugging my plants.
For those less obsessed and have not researched what to do with their growing mound of black gold here is a quick run down.
Coffee grounds:
- nitrogen and potassium rich;
- and includes magnesium
- and copper
- carbon-to-nitrogen ratio of 20:1
- contain up to 2% nitrogen
- pH of between 3.0 and 5.0
- deter snails and slugs
Also coffee crounds are not just good for the garden, they also repel odors, great to sprinkle some in the trash to help keep the stink down. A perfect abrasive for gently scrubbing cast iron without getting the cure patina off, also gentle enough for your skin, my other half loves the coffee soap I make.
I love coffee! We put all our grounds in the compost. I never thought to put it directly on the plant. Nice.
I had some plants at my moms that I gave up on, as her house is infested with little plant buggies, and she decided to be helpful and bring my long lost plants here. The house became infested in no time. But I forgot to add (will update later) that adding the coffee grounds to the top of the soil in the potted plants also helped with the gnats, now they are almost all gone.
Also the peppers loved them, once I started adding the grounds to the outdoor garden, they went from puny to out of control, couldn’t keep up with the cooking, they were producing so fast.