Are you a coffee drinker and a gardener? If so, we have a hack that’s perfect for you. Instead of throwing out all those leftover coffee grounds, you can toss them into your garden! Yup, you read it right. You can use coffee grounds for plants and flowers and enjoy its benefits. This is also one of the reasons why coffee is a gem.
Here’s what coffee grounds do to your plants:
1. Use Coffee Grounds for Plants and Flowers as Fertilizer
Even if you don’t have a full-on garden, but just one small, potted plant in your apartment, this is still something you can do.
Coffee grounds actually contain essential nutrients nitrogen, potassium, phosphorus, and other micronutrients. This means it can be used as a slow-release fertilizer! Simply sprinkle a thin layer of coffee grounds on top of your soil, and voila!
2. Compost Coffee Grounds
This one should be a no-brainer! Not only can you toss your leftover coffee grounds into your compost pile, but you can also toss the paper filter in as well.
Don’t have a compost pile? Embrace Mother Earth and get started! You can follow these four easy steps to create your compost pile/bin at home on Maria’s Farm Country Kitchen‘s website.
3. Natural Pesticide
While we might love coffee, pests like slugs and snails are not fans of the bitter drink. To keep them out of your garden, you need only sprinkle them over your soil.
This is one of the reasons why you should use coffee grounds for plants and flowers.
4. Flourish Acid-Loving Plants
You can get your roses in full bloom with a little bit of coffee! Doesn’t coffee perk everyone up? If you have roses, rhododendrons, azaleas, lilies, holly, or gardenias, you’re going to want to keep some extra coffee grounds on hand.
The question is, do roses like coffee grounds? Thankfully, the answer is yes. Just avoid putting too much, though.
It is known that coffee grounds react well to the acidity in the soil and these plants thrive. Although there is a long list of plants that like coffee grounds, keep in mind to be careful and keep it away from your veggies like tomatoes. It’s because tomatoes tend to not respond well to coffee grounds.
5. Keep Cats out of Your Garden
Does your cat gnaw on all of your beautiful flowers and plants? Same! Not only is it pesky, it is also dangerous for your kitties. Lilies can be near-deadly if consumed by cats.
Putting coffee grounds in your soil will help keep your cat from digging up all of your favorite plants and it should hopefully limit their chewing. You can also mix in orange peels to help keep your cat from using your garden as a bathroom.
6. Flourish Your Carrots and Radish Harvest
What plants like coffee grounds as fertilizer? Have you heard that carrots and radishes are among these plants?
And if you’re looking to double your harvest of carrots and radishes, you can mix together the seeds of your carrots and radishes with your coffee grounds before planting them.
7. Make the Worms Happy
If you feel bad when all of the worms come up to the surface after a big rainstorm, you can help them out by feeding them.
Like all of us dragging ourselves out of bed every morning, worms like the taste of coffee! You can feed their bellies by sprinkling some coffee grounds in your garden.
Worms are good for your garden, as they act like little plows that break up the soil and allow water and air to get into the mix.
8. Make Some Mulch
Using coffee grounds for mulch can help control weeds in your garden and keep plants hydrated. Some gardeners have found that using coffee grounds directly can be disastrous for this purpose. Instead, it is better to mix the grounds with organic matter, like compost.
If not, you can rake the coffee grounds into the top layer of your garden’s soil.
Takeaway
The next time you finish a pot of coffee, be sure to save the grounds. There are so many ways to put them to use in the garden. If you want to learn more about how to use these grounds and how to store coffee grounds for garden, check out the video below.
Source: GrowVeg