Is coffee good fertilizer for plants

How to Use Coffee to Water Plants

Colleen Vanderlinden

Colleen Vanderlinden is an organic gardening expert and author of the book "Edible Gardening for the Midwest." She has grown fruits and vegetables for over 12 years and professionally written for 15-plus years. To help move the organic gardening movement forward, she started an organic gardening website, "In the Garden Online," in 2003 and launched the Mouse & Trowel Awards in 2007 to recognize gardening bloggers.

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Updated on 06/07/22

Reviewed by

Mary Marlowe Leverette

Reviewed by Mary Marlowe Leverette

Mary been a Master Gardener for 30+ years and a commercial and residential gardener for 50+ years. She is a former Clemson University Extension Agent. She worked to develop the Riverbanks Botanical Garden that opened in 1995. Mary co-owns Marlowe Farms Apple Orchards.

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Fact checked by

Emily Estep

Fact checked by Emily Estep

Emily Estep is a plant biologist and fact-checker focused on environmental sciences. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism and a Master of Science in Plant Biology from Ohio University. Emily has been a proofreader and editor at a variety of online media outlets over the past decade.

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The Spruce / Danielle Holstein

Coffee is part of our daily life and a common gardening question is whether it's okay to water plants with leftover coffee or to add coffee grounds to the compost pile.

The answer is yes, in some situations using coffee when gardening is not only acceptable but a good idea. There are some caveats, though.

Using Leftover Coffee Grounds

The Spruce / Danielle Holstein

Coffee grounds are a good source of nitrogen in your compost pile or when added directly to the soil in the garden. If added in fairly large amounts, they can raise the acidity level of the soil for acid-loving plants such as blueberries, azaleas, and rhododendrons. Coffee grounds sprinkled over the ground around acid-loving plants serve as a mild acid fertilizer for them. And worms seem to love them, either in your garden or outdoor compost pile or in a vermicompost bin.

And coffee grounds are regarded as an effective natural deterrent to garden pests such as slugs, snails, and ants. Rumors of coffee grounds repelling deer may be overstated. Deer are voracious eaters, and a few cups of coffee grounds are unlikely to make much of a difference. Coffee grounds will discourage a mischievous cat from roaming in your garden, but its effectiveness on rabbits and other common garden rodents is unknown.

Tip

If you're not a coffee drinker, don't forget your used tea leaves. They work great as a soil enhancer around acid-loving plants and add nutrients to compost piles.

How to Use Leftover Liquid Coffee

The Spruce / Danielle Holstein

If you brew coffee by the pot, you may wonder if the cold leftovers can be used to water plants. Or, can the remaining half cup of cold coffee in your mug be poured into that potted pothos plant next to your desk?

The short answer is: maybe. It depends on the plant. Plants that prefer more acidic soil (such as African violets, Impatiens, Norfolk Island pines, Phalaenopsis orchids, and Dieffenbachia) seem to respond well to a weekly watering with coffee. Outdoors, acid-loving plants like azaleas, Rhododendron, Siberian iris, lupine, and any pine trees or shrubs will do fine if periodically watered with cold coffee. Liquid coffee can also be used to water a compost pile that has become too dry.

If you decide to try watering houseplants with coffee, keep a close eye on your plant. If the foliage starts yellowing or the tips of the leaves start turning brown, it's a sign that the coffee is adding too much acidity to the soil. It's not a bad idea to dilute your coffee with water, especially if you prefer your daily cup of java on the strong side. In some offices, the only "watering" plants received is from emptying leftover coffee into the soil, and they often do quite well.

One caveat: if you add cream, milk, or sugar to your coffee, don't pour it into your plants. Ditto for flavored coffees. The sugars and fats can not only harm your plants and invite pests but can eventually result in a stinky mess. A plant watered with sweetened or flavored coffee may soon be overrun by fungal gnats or odorous house ants.

Article Sources

The Spruce uses only high-quality sources, including peer-reviewed studies, to support the facts within our articles. Read our editorial process to learn more about how we fact-check and keep our content accurate, reliable, and trustworthy.

Grounds in the Garden. Texas A&M University AgriLife Extension.
Acid Soil Problems. Louisiana State University Agricultural Center.
Fungus Gnats Tiny Flies Around Your Houseplants. University of Wisconsin at Madison Department of Entomology.

Using Coffee Grounds As Fertilizer

Home › Composting › Compost Ingredients

Compost Ingredients

By: Heather Rhoades

Image by ThamKC

Whether you make your cup of coffee daily or you have noticed your local coffee house has started to put out bags of used coffee, you may be wondering about composting with coffee grounds. Are coffee grounds as fertilizer a good idea? How do coffee grounds used for gardens help or hurt? Keep reading to learn more about coffee grounds and gardening.

Composting Coffee Grounds

Composting with coffee is a great way to make use of something that would otherwise end up taking up space in a landfill. Composting coffee grounds helps to add nitrogen to your compost pile.

Composting coffee grounds is as easy as throwing the used coffee grounds onto your compost pile. Used coffee filters can be composted as well.

If you will be adding used coffee grounds to your compost pile, keep in mind that they are considered green compost material and will need to be balanced with the addition of some brown compost material.

Coffee Grounds as Fertilizer

Used coffee grounds for gardening does not end with compost. Many people choose to place coffee grounds straight onto the soil and use it as a fertilizer. The thing to keep in mind is while coffee grounds add nitrogen to your compost, they will not immediately add nitrogen to your soil.

The benefit of using coffee grounds as a fertilizer is that it adds organic material to the soil, which improves drainage, water retention, and aeration in the soil. The used coffee grounds will also help microorganisms beneficial to plant growth thrive as well as attract earthworms.

Many people feel that coffee grounds lower the pH (or raise the acid level) of soil, which is good for acid loving plants. This is only true for unwashed coffee grounds though. Fresh coffee grounds are acidic. Used coffee grounds are neutral. If you rinse your used coffee grounds, they will have a near neutral pH of 6.5 and will not affect the acid levels of the soil.

To use coffee grounds as fertilizer, work the coffee grounds into the soil around your plants. Leftover diluted coffee works well like this too.

Other Uses for Used Coffee Grounds in Gardens

Coffee grounds can also be used in your garden for other things.

Many gardeners like to use used coffee grounds as a mulch for their plants.
Other uses for coffee grounds include using it to keep slugs and snails away from plants. The theory is that the caffeine in the coffee grounds negatively affects these pests and so they avoid soil where the coffee grounds are found.
Some people also claim that coffee grounds on the soil is a cat repellent and will keep cats from using your flower and veggie beds as a litter box.
You can use coffee grounds as worm food too if you do vermicomposting with a worm bin. Worms are very fond of coffee grounds.

Using Fresh Coffee Grounds

We get lots of questions about using fresh coffee grounds in the garden. While it’s not always recommended, it shouldn’t be a problem in some situations.

For instance, you can sprinkle fresh coffee grounds around acid-loving plants like azaleas, hydrangeas, blueberries, and lilies. Many vegetables like slightly acidic soil, but tomatoes typically don’t respond well to the addition of coffee grounds. Root crops, like radishes and carrots, on the other hand, respond favorably — especially when mixed with the soil at planting time.
The use of fresh coffee grounds are thought to suppress weeds too, having some allelopathic properties, of which adversely affects tomato plants. Another reason why it should be used with care. That being said, some fungal pathogens may be suppressed as well.
Sprinkling dry, fresh grounds around plants (and on top of soil) helps deter some pests same as with used coffee grounds. While it doesn’t fully eliminate them, it does seem to help with keeping cats, rabbits, and slugs at bay, minimizing their damage in the garden. As previously mentioned, this is thought to be due to the caffeine content.
In lieu of the caffeine found in fresh, unbrewed coffee grounds, which can have an adverse effect on plants, you may want to used decaffeinated coffee or only apply fresh grounds minimally to avoid any issues.

Coffee grounds and gardening go together naturally. Whether you are composting with coffee grounds or using used coffee grounds around the yard, you will find that coffee can give your garden as much of a pick me up as it does for you.

This article was last updated on 01/27/22

Content:

1. For which plants are
2. Methods of use
  - Watering
  - Mulching
  - Supplement
  - compost
  - for soil seedlings
  - Pest protection
3. Where not to use
4. Helpful tips

thick as a fertilizer for indoor plants, flowers and gardens.

The answer to the question of whether coffee grounds can be used as fertilizer is obvious: of course you can! But let's take a closer look at what benefits this brings to plants.

By adding coffee grounds to the soil, especially clay and loam soil, its structure becomes looser, drainage capacity and air exchange improve. In addition, coffee attracts earthworms, which also contribute to loosening the soil.
The smell of coffee can repel harmful insects. He doesn't like cats either. If you sprinkle your garden beds with coffee grounds, you don't have to worry that uninvited visits from your pet will damage tender plantings.
It is believed that fresh coffee has an increased level of acidity, and top dressing with such characteristics is not suitable for every plant. However, to avoid acidification of the soil, it is enough to shed thick water and then apply in the garden or vegetable garden.
Coffee grounds as a fertilizer are rich in minerals and trace elements. Potassium and phosphorus contribute to good flowering and abundant fruiting. Nitrogen activates the rapid growth of plants. Copper helps to resist a number of diseases. And although the total amount of useful substances in coffee cake is about 2–3%, which means that it can hardly be considered a full-fledged fertilizer, the use of grounds as an organic plant food is fully justified.

What kind of plants is coffee fertilizer suitable for? Therefore, before you widely use it in your garden, you need to study for which plants it is most effective to use coffee grounds as a fertilizer. It is most useful for flowers that prefer a low pH level - azaleas, hydrangeas, heathers and rhododendrons. Due to the large amount of potassium in the composition, coffee grounds can be used as a fertilizer when growing vegetable crops such as tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers, and peppers. Feeding fruit trees with sleeping coffee will also help to significantly increase their fruiting. Magnesium, which is part of coffee, is useful for berry bushes. Magnesium and potassium will help to get a high yield of root crops, while nitrogen is indispensable for green crops.

Roses, palms, ficuses and ferns, as well as violets and asparagus, respond best to coffee fertilization. When using coffee grounds as a fertilizer for houseplants, it is recommended to shed and dry it first. If you simply pour the rest of the coffee from the cup into the pot, most likely there will be no benefit, but on the contrary, the soil may become covered with a crust and begin to mold. To prevent this, you need to mix the prepared thick with soil suitable for this type of plant.

Coffee with sugar or milk should not be used for horticultural, horticultural and flower crops, as sugar attracts ants, and milk provokes the development of putrefactive processes in the soil, which can harm the root system of plants.

Methods of use

Watering

Used coffee must be diluted with a sufficient amount of liquid before it can be used as a fertilizer for watering plants. To prepare a solution for 10 liters of water, 1 cup of grounds is required. Cake is poured with a small amount of water and left to swell for about a day. After swelling, the amount of liquid is adjusted to the calculated amount and used for watering plants.

After feeding the plants with coffee grounds, it is advisable to water the soil again, but with clean water. This technique will allow the minerals to be slowly released, nourishing the plants. When planting bushes, you should spill the ground with coffee solution at the rate of 1 liter under the bush.

Mulching

Coffee grounds can also be used for mulching crops to protect soil from drying out, repel pests and improve soil structure. However, it must be remembered that when using the grounds as mulch, as in the case of using coffee cake as a fertilizer in the garden in the country, it should be thoroughly dried to prevent the development of mold.

Soil supplement

Dormant ground coffee as a fertilizer can be added to the planting hole or hole before planting to improve soil structure. This technique makes the land more drained and loose, which ultimately has a positive effect on plant health and yield. When used on light soils, the thick acts as a binder. In this case, top dressing is applied to the upper soil layer at the rate of 200 ml per 1 m².

Compost

To speed up the maturation of the compost, it is enough to spill each layer no more than 10 cm thick with coffee infusion. Coffee grounds perform the function of nitrogen components that trigger an exothermic reaction inside the compost heap, in other words, heating it up, due to which the compost matures much faster. This method is so effective that some summer residents specifically purchase inexpensive varieties of ground coffee and sprinkle layers of compost on them.

For seedlings

Recently, the method of growing vegetable seedlings on a coffee substrate has become popular. But in order to prevent depletion of the soil, it is necessary from time to time to feed the seedlings with complex fertilizers.

Protection against pests

Coffee pomace as a fertilizer in the garden is also very effective for protecting plants from sexually mature individuals of harmful insects - ants, snails, aphids, slugs. According to the experience of some gardeners, coffee can also destroy pest larvae, in particular mosquitoes and garden bugs. This remedy is not as effective as insecticides, but also much safer.

Where not to use coffee grounds

Coffee grounds are rich in nitrogen, so if used in excess, you can burn the root system, which will lead to the death of the plant.

Poorly dried coffee waste can cause mold and fungal diseases and kill plants. In addition, coffee fertilizer is not suitable for tradescantia, asparagus, geraniums and other crops that prefer more alkaline soil. Top dressing from pomace can change the shade of rose flowers.

Helpful Hints

Dried coffee grounds are very light, so when used dry, even the slightest breeze can blow them off the garden. To prevent this from happening, it is recommended to mix the cake with earth or sawdust and close it shallowly into the soil.

If the color of the leaves of the plants has changed after treatment with coffee grounds, the use of coffee grounds as a fertilizer should be discontinued. You can carefully strain the coffee infusion and use only liquid for irrigation, and use the thick, for example, to feed conifers.

It is recommended to prepare fertilizer from coffee grounds for summer cottages, using cake from the preparation of only natural coffee. Instant powder and granulated coffee is not advisable to use for this purpose, since their nutritional value is not great.

Coffee grounds as a fertilizer for plants and flowers

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