There has been talk that coffee grounds help to fertilize and enrich the soil that plants are in-and while this may make some feel slightly skeptical, it is most certainly true!
The truth is, coffee can be simply fabulous for your plants, and can help even extend their lives, making them grow healthier, stronger, and far more lush. However, while coffee is a good fertilizer for plants, you need to use it properly. The idea isn’t to pour out whatever is left from your daily coffee, as you don’t want to have any kind of milk, cream, sweetener or sugar in the coffee that you’re using on your plants as any kind of nourishment.
While sugar isn’t the biggest issue, since plants like and do need sugar to live, milk, sweeteners and cream won’t do your plants any good either. However, even with plain, black coffee, this is much too strong, and needs to be watered down a great deal in order to be used on coffee. Diluted black coffee needs to be used alongside fertilizer, and helps to give your plants a dose of nitrogen, which they need to be healthy.
When it comes to using coffee, you need to think of plants and flowers that like soil with levels of acidity, these are the plants that will flourish the most from watered down black coffee. Many flowers like potted ferns, and wild ferns, as well as many roses will work well with the acidity levels in diluted black coffee.
A great way to use coffee with your plants, flowers or garden is to simply use just some coffee grounds you’ve already used, and not liquid coffee that has already been made. However, this method is also much better for indoor plants rather than outdoor plants, making it ideal for those who live in apartments or don’t have a yard. Plants that are indoors typically don’t get the same nitrogen, and watering the grounds and the soil together helps to add more nitrogen.
If you use coffee grounds or diluted coffee with your plants that are living outside, you may simply attract small bugs and earth worms, which will start to eat the soil surrounding your plant and even eventually your plants. The worms will start to eventually work their way through the earth and dirt surrounding the plants, and will leave waste all along where it moves around. This does help with loosening up hard clay, but isn’t so great for soft soil where your plants are already flourishing, and don’t need to be disturbed by both earth worms and any other bugs that may be in the soil. If the soil in the ground possesses a lot of alkaline, coffee grounds can help to break it up and acidify it much more, which is often needed. However, for this kind of project, a lot of coffee grounds would actually be required – you may need to collect them from a while, or get them from the coffee maker at your work.