Coffee Grounds for Your Garden

Tue, Aug 18, 15 by Jim Couch

Instead of throwing away your coffee grounds each day, try saving them for your garden! Coffee grounds make a great addition to the compost pile, as they are about 2% nitrogen by volume. Nitrogen helps stimulate root development, increases seed and fruit production, and promotes leaf growth. It’s also found in other popular fertilizers like manure.

Good homemade compost is made by mixing carbon-rich ingredients (dried leaves, straw, shredded newspaper) with nitrogen-rich ingredients (grass clippings, manures, coffee grounds, green plant trimmings). The fastest rate of decomposition occurs when there are 2-3 times the amount of carbon ingredients to nitrogen ingredients. So, for every bucket of coffee grounds in the pile, you’ll want 2-3 buckets of dried leaves, etc. Maintaining this balance will also help reduce the odor of the compost, and turning the pile is also helpful.

If you don’t have a compost pile where you live, you can still use the grounds in a garden or around potted plants. Just sprinkle them in small amounts around the soil, or bury them in small trenches.