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!

A small pea seedling in the ground with a spoon containing coffee grounds overhead. Coffee grounds have been sprinkled in a ring around the seedling.

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