Did you know you can reuse your used coffee grounds in your garden? Yes, you heard well! Coffee grounds are rich in nutrients and natural bug repellent, making them perfect to nourish and protect your plants.
Fertilizing your plants with ground coffee
The first step to fertilize your plants, is to make yourself an espresso. Yes you understood well, and better if you make it with the traditional moka or with a machines that uses ground coffee. After savouring a great Caffè Aiello espresso, you are ready to move into your garden and spoil a little bit your plants and flowers!
Ground coffee properties as a fertilizer
The same way coffee cheers you up in the morning, it can also do the same with your plants. Let’s see which are the elements in it that contribute to fertilize your plants’ soil:
- Potassium
- Calcium
- Nitrogen
- Magnesium
A natural bug repellent
Not only nourishing properties, but great bug repellent ones. Your used coffee grounds are great to keep insects and snails away. If you grow and harvest vegs in your garden, using coffee grounds instead of chemical pesticides makes your veggie patch an organic one!
In order to make this happen, all you need to do id to sprinkle a little bit of ground coffee on the soil under and around your plant.
What type of plants coffee grounds is a good fertilizer for?
Some plants require an acidic soil for their proper growth: those are the kind of plants that will benefit the most from the presence of a little bit of coffee ground in their own soil.
Here’s a brief list:
- Camelia
- Azalea
- Mimosa
- Magnolia
- Rhododendron
- Birch
- Fir
- Maple
- Lily
- Lilac
And the best one: hydrangea, whose flowers will turn blue if you spread some coffee in its soil!
What about my vegetable patch?
No worries, there are many vegetables and fruit plants as well that would like some coffee love! Actually some of them would like a more “complete” kind of fertilizer: try to add some lime or ash to your coffee grounds before spreading them around those plants.
Here’s where you can use it on:
- Herbs like dill, pepper, parsley, basil and garlic
- Berries
- Tomatoes
- Melons
- Tomatoes
- Cucumber
- Zucchini and aubergines
- Corn
- Pumpkins
- Potatoes (regular and sweet)
- Carrots
- Radish
- Turnips
- Rhubarb
Solid or liquid?
Until now we talked about spreading coffee grounds around your plants. But you can also make a liquid coffee fertilizer, which will prove itself especially good for the treatment of leaves. Here’s how you can prepare it:
- Prepare 2 cups of coffee grounds
- Add them to a bucket full of water
- Leave it there for 24h hours
- Ready!
Do you love gardening? So do we! Let us know if your fertilizing coffee grounds proved effective!
