How To Save Coffee Grounds – And Use Them To Fertilize Your Vegetables & Flowers This Summer! : Saving your leftover coffee grounds now lets you fuel your garden and flowerbeds naturally in spring and summer. They also revitalize hanging baskets, perennials, and houseplants!
How To Save Coffee Grounds – And Use Them To Fertilize Your Vegetables & Flowers This Summer!
Coffee grounds are a great natural fertilizer for many plants. Best of all, free! Coffee grinds benefit soil and plants. They add structure and moisture absorption to potting and plant soil. While enriching soil with nutrients and trace minerals.
How To Save And Use Coffee Grounds
Remember to use just spent coffee grounds. Starting with fresh coffee grounds to power your plants would be pricey. The other reason is that fresh grinds might hurt plants.
Fresh coffee grounds are acidic. Plants sensitive to soil acidity will struggle on new grounds. After heating and washing the grounds during coffee preparation, the acid levels reduce, making them perfect for usage.
Finding old coffee grounds is a good idea even if you don’t drink coffee. Request that friends, relatives, and neighbors save their grounds. Most folks are delighted to help—unless they have their own gardens!
Ask your neighborhood coffee shops too. Most know gardeners use wasted grounds. Many grounds have weekly lists you can join. This can help you store a lot of spent coffee grounds.
Safely Saving Coffee Grounds
It’s not always practical to use wasted coffee grinds immediately. Especially if you’re saving a lot over the winter for spring planting. Unfortunately, throwing old grounds into a container won’t work.
Spent coffee grounds are rich in nutrients and moisture. The spent grounds will mold fast if collected in a bucket or container. Fortunately, there are two simple ways to save them without anxiety.
Freezing wasted grounds is the safest and fastest method. Put wasted grounds in a big, resealable freezer-safe plastic bag and freeze. Freezing the grounds keeps them mold-free forever. Better still, a resealable bag makes it easy to add grounds.
You may also dry spent coffee grinds in the oven on a baking sheet instead of freezing them. Bake at 200°F for 30 minutes. Grounds will dry out with heat. Dry ones can be preserved for months in a sealed container.
How Coffee Grounds Benefit Garden Plants – Saving and Using Coffee Grounds
Coffee grinds improve soil organic matter, which helps plants. Most vegetables and annuals need loose, well-draining soil.
Heavy, dense soils hinder root growth. Heavy soil makes it hard for roots to absorb moisture and nutrients to develop strong and healthy.
In addition to loosening soil compaction, coffee grounds assist soil absorb and retain moisture.
Using Spent Coffee Grounds Outside – How To Save Coffee Grounds
Many ways exist to employ leftover coffee grinds with veggies, flowers, and vegetables. These recommendations work for in-ground gardens, raised beds, and hanging baskets or containers.
Place a few teaspoons of spent grounds immediately in planting holes when planting plants. This gives plants a tiny dose of nutrients at their roots. This benefits vegetables, annuals, and perennials.
After planting, sprinkle a few teaspoons of spent grounds around each plant’s base. The plants will receive a modest amount of nutrients every time it rains or you water them. To maintain slow feeding, add coffee grounds to the base monthly.
This is why hanging baskets and container plants benefit from monthly grounds. Each time you water, nutrients leach down to power plants.
You can even compost coffee grinds directly at home. Coffee grounds, a “green source,” heat compost piles. Hot piles breakdown swiftly and produce nutrient-rich compost faster than before.
Using Indoors – How To Save Coffee Grounds
You can nourish houseplants year-round using coffee grounds. Making a dilute fertilizer tea and watering your plants is excellent. Soak quarter cup wasted grounds in gallon of water for many days to create. After straining the grinds, water your houseplants.
Check out our 4 Great Ways To Recycle Coffee Grounds for more ideas. Keep your grounds and use them to energize your plants indoors and out!