Coffee in the Garden

Every day across America, millions of pots of coffee and tea are brewed, and the millions of pounds of wet grounds, filters and bags thrown in the trash.  This wasteful and could be put to so much better use.

Coffee and filters can be used in the garden and farm as follows:

• Throw it in your compost: Coffee grounds are 1.45% nitrogen and contain calcium and magnesium to add some trace minerals you may not get from your other organic material.  Coffee grounds are a green material (I know coffee is brown, but same idea as grass clippings) so you should add with at least equal amounts of brown material (leaves). Coffee filters and tea bags decompose quickly, so just put it all in the compost pile.
• Add it directly to your garden:   Coffee has an average pH of 6.9 so for all intensive purposes, it is neutral. It loses most (or all) of its acidity during the brewing process.
• Fertilizer: Sometimes your plants need a little boost in the morning as well.  Simply add a couple cups of coffee grounds to a bucket of water and let it seep for 24 hours and apply to plant in the same way you would compost tea.  If you are busy/lazy you also can use it as a side dressing on top of your soil and let the rain seep it for you. That is my preferred method.
• Annoy your pests to stay out of your garden: It has been said that coffee grounds can deter cats from using your garden as their own personal commode.  There are also reports that it can deter slugs as well.  Coffee grounds may annoy ants to convince them to move their home elsewhere.

You can usually get coffee from your local coffee shop. But here is another thing to think about. Has the coffee you are using been grown organic. No chemicals used on it before, during or after the growing process. If you are trying to truly keep you garden chemical free, consider the coffee you are using in the garden and  compost pile.

There is some great information on the web about starting a compost pile in your back yard. I am amazed at how much stuff we have come up with  to put in the pile since we started our this spring. Coffee grounds has been a big boast to our pile because we are always serving coffee. When I will start to put something down the disposal, and then I remember I have a small bucket by the sink to take to the pile. We very rarely use the disposal anymore.

Bonus things to do with coffee: 

1. Put some coffee grounds down the disposal, let it sit for a little bit and then run it, the grounds will help freshen the disposal and the drain.
2. Have a musty trunk or old chest of draws, put whole bean or ground coffee in them, it will remove the smell. Give it some time, it works.
3. Place a bowl of coffee beans in the refrigerator, it will keep the smells out. This is the most important reason to NEVER, NEVER store your coffee in the refrigerator. Coffee absorbs smells and taste very easily, unless you like onion flavor and scented coffee, keep it out of the refrigerator if you intend to brew and drink it later.
4. This one is from my non-coffee drinking son. He loves the smell of fresh coffee. So we took a nylon stocking and made a sachet for him to put in his car. You can hide it under the seat or just keep it on the dash. The ideas came to him when he was delivering some fresh roasted coffee to someone he works with and when he got back into the car, the whole car smelled like fresh roasted coffee.

This is just an FYI: I made an challenge to an art friend of mine, do a painting this summer with coffee. I am providing her with some shots of espresso for the challenge. Can’t wait to see the results.