How to Use Coffee Grounds in the Garden

I don’t actually drink coffee but others in my family do so I am lucky enough that I still have access to some coffee grounds.  I have been adding coffee grounds to the compost for a while now but I have always wondered if there were other ways that they could be used in the garden. So I decided to do some reading and see if I could learn a bit more about how to use coffee grounds in the garden.

I initially wondered if there would be any problems with just sprinkling them around the garden. I didn’t know if that would be okay for the plants and the soil. But it seems as if coffee grounds are perfectly safe to sprinkle around plants; they can even be used to deter slugs and snails!

Sprinkle coffee grounds around new seedlings to deter snails and slugs.

Actually as it turns out coffee grounds can be a lot more than just a great ingredient for your compost!

Another thing that I was interested to learn is that worms love coffee grounds; they will help to attract worms to your compost and you can also add them to your worm farm!

In fact these is quite a bit of information available online about using coffee grounds in the garden so I will summarise what I have learnt.

How to Use Coffee Grounds in the Garden:

• When adding them to the compost use no more than 10 -20 % of the total volume
• The addition of coffee grounds will not necessarily change the pH of your soil or compost
• When adding them to your compost remember that coffee grounds are a green compost material so you must therefore add some brown material as well
• Worms love them so use them in your worm farm
• You can sprinkle them around your plants and dig them through the top soil a bit
• They can be used as mulch as long as you only use a thin layer (no more than half an inch as they compact and then repel water) and then cover with straw mulch
• Sprinkle around seedlings to deter snails and slugs
• Be careful using coffee ground compost for germinating seeds, some seed germination is supressed by the presence of coffee grounds

Overall I found that this was a very interesting topic to read about. So if you would like to do some further reading about using coffee grounds in the garden I can recommend the following links (links updated October 2016):

Backyard Boss: Coffee Grounds for Gardening – 8 Different Uses

WSU,Puyallup Research and Extension Center: Coffee grounds – will they perk up plants? (PDF)

Gardening Know How: Composting With Coffee Grounds – Used Coffee Grounds For Gardening

Green Talk: 5 Ways to Use Coffee Grounds for the Garden