Coffee Bean Direct Blog

Used Coffee grounds = Free food for your garden!

After a very long and cold winter in the great Northeast (so much snow!) I am ready for Spring! This winter I purchased my first home and all I can think about is gardening. I cannot wait to plant a vegetable and herb garden. Lucky for me, the previous owner had a green thumb so I do not have to worry too much about flowers; I can already see stuff poking up through the dirt.

This year I plan on using my coffee grounds to help my garden grow. Browsing the internet for some information I found some great info from www.SeattlePi.com.

Used coffee grounds have many uses, from mulching to compost building. This is one ubiquitous material it’s hard to have too much of. If you decide to mulch your beds and borders with ground coffee, here’s a hot fashion tip: Remove the filters first. Those raggedy white papers look too tacky for words when left fluttering around your flowers. White or brown, you can shred the filter papers and mix them into the compost, where they’ll break down nicely in short order.

Ground coffee is high in nitrogen, making it a very good mulch for fast-growing vegetables. Many organic growers swear by coffee grounds as mulches for tomato plants, both for the nitrogen boost this heavy feeder appreciates and for coffee’s ability to help suppress late blight.

Coffee-ground mulch also can help reduce the ravages of slugs and snails. At a recent class, one participant announced that she always mulched her Hostas with coffee grounds each day and had never before understood why they were never bothered by slugs.

Coffee grounds can be used to mulch plants that slugs love to feast on, such as Hostas, Ligularias and Lilies. Try them for daffodils and other spring bulbs as well. You also can rid areas of slugs and snails by brewing coffee and making it two to three times stronger than you ordinarily would. Spray this concentrated coffee where slugs roam free and you’ll notice a definite drop-off in damage.

So when you’re out there this year in your gardens I hope that you will use your used coffee grounds. Why throw them away when your plants can benefit greatly from them?

Happy Gardening!