10 Super Simple Ways To Use Coffee Grounds In The Garden
Even if you’ve never tried this yourself, you might have heard that coffee grounds can be beneficial for certain types of plants and are sometimes used in gardening. The question is how to actually use it and in which situations. We looked for some ideas and selected a bunch to share with you today. You can mix and match the ones that make sense for your own needs and even do you own experiments to potentially find more uses for coffee grounds in the garden.
Using coffee grounds as fertilizer
This would have to be by far the most common way to use coffee grounds in the garden. The idea is quite simple. You can take a bag of coffee grounds and a bag of topsoil and mix them together in equal parts. You can then use this as a potting mixture for your plants. Alternatively, you can simply sprinkle coffee grounds on top of your flower beds or potted plants. Make sure that you don’t create a layer thicker than half an inch because that can then turn into a solid crust which prevents water front reaching the roots of the plants.
Coffee grounds as natural pesticide
If you have a problem in your garden with snails and slugs, coffee grounds can help with that. There’s also an idea going around that coffee grounds also repel ants. It’s quite unclear what that is, possible explanations being that the slugs and snails don’t like the abrasive texture and choose to avoid the coffee grounds or that the caffeine is harmful to them and the ants. Either way, you can create a barrier around your plants and offer them some extra protection this way.
Prevent and suppress fungal diseases with coffee grounds
Coffee grounds are anti microbial and they can be used in the garden to prevent and stop various types of fungal diseases. You can integrate them into your garden compost to stop the spread of the bacteria and to give your plants a better chance of staying healthy for longer periods of time. You can use this method for beans, cucumbers, spinach, tomato plants and more.
Coffee grounds as compost
Coffee grounds can also be used as compost. You don’t need to do anything special, just throw them into the compost bin as you would do with other leftovers. They are a green compost material and rich in nitrogen. Brown compost material which you get from eggshells, cardboard, leaves and paper is rich in carbon. It’s import to establish a balance between these two types. When using coffee grounds, you can even throw the filter in the compost bin since it’s biodegradable.
Attract and feed worms with coffee grounds
Worms enjoy coffee grounds and if you have a worm bin in your garden you can add some to it every week. A cup of coffee grounds per week for a small worm bin is enough since too much acidity could actually bother the worms. If you incorporate coffee grounds into your fertilizer, earthworms will also become attracted to it and thus hang around your garden more.
Coffee grounds as mulch
You can also use coffee grounds to add texture to your garden soil. To create mulch you can spread a thin layer of coffee grounds (half an inch) on top of the soil and then add a layer of coarse organic mulch such as wood chips for example. If the coffee ground layer is too thick it will fuse into a barrier which prevents moisture and air movement so try to avoid that.
Lawn fertilizer
You can also use coffee grounds as fertilizer for your lawn, not just for flower beds or vegetables. That’s great news if you don’t really have a garden and prefer the simplicity of a clean and manicured lawn instead. In any case, all you need to do is sprinkle coffee grounds on top of the soil every once in a while and this will help your lawn to look nice and healthy. Alternatively, to avoid having clumps of coffee grounds all over your lawn, you can mix them with water and use this for irrigation.
Use coffee grounds to grow mushrooms
As you might know, mushrooms are difficult to grow because they require very specific conditions. Regular garden soil won’t do because a substrate is needed. That’s when coffee grounds come in handy. Here’s how you can use it to grow mushrooms: take 2.5 kg of coffee grounds and moisten them with a spray bottle, then add 500 grams of mushroom spore and sawdust mixture. Take the resulted mixture and put it in a container so that it’s half or two thirds full. Make holes into the sides of the container above the grounds and lightly spray the grounds with water daily to keep them moist. Keep the container is a dark and enclosed space. When you start to see the mushrooms grow, move the container in an area with fresh air.
Coffee grounds and roses
Coffee grounds are great for rose bushes. These plants benefit from having coffee grounds added to their soil because they enjoy the nitrogen it releases. This given them a boost and helps them grow faster and bigger. Additionally, it also helps that coffee grounds acts as a repellant for certain types of insects and snails. You can sprinkle dried grounds on the soil at the bottom of the rose bushes or add it to the compost. You can also mix it with water and pour it at the base of the bush regularly (once or twice a month).
Coffee grounds and hydrangea
The beautiful hydrangea flowers also love coffee grounds. They release nutrients which help the flowers grow and give them more vivid colors. Also, if you want your hydrangea flowers to turn blue, you can use a combination of coffee grounds, grass clippings, fruit, veggie scraps and other organic matter. Apply this mixture around the plants, let it compost completely and then incorporate it into the soil. It takes some time but eventually the results become visible and you’ll notice your pink flowers turning blue over time.