Coffee Grinds in the Garden

Coffee Grinds for Plants and the Garden

I’m often asked about using coffee grinds in the garden, and on plants which in some cases, are special to their owners. It is worth remembering that using grinds in the garden is one of those old world remedies, and it is disappearing from common use. There is just a small group (hopefully you are now a member of it?!), that is making use of this fantastic resource for the garden.

I have three compost bins in my backyard and a worm farm. I’ve recently opened up a couple of them to air in this lovely Spring of ours, and took some photos that I wanted to share with you.

The photo below is one of the piles of compost being allowed to rest before going into the garden, and in this case it will be used on Plot 2 as I get the tomatoes established.

This is amazing, rich, vibrant new soil. It was created with coffee grinds, food scraps from the kitchen, leafmould, and woodchips. The cost for me – $0, the benefit for my garden – Priceless.

Just have a look at the number of worms, all I did to expose them was to scrape some of the soil from the top. Just to recap – Coffee grinds are as good for worms as they are for the garden and plants.

And this from the second coffee compost pile. A heap of worms have made this their home, laid eggs, and the next generation are staying close to the oldies.

Again from the second coffee compost pile, look how rich that soil is, you can see healthy worms, and even some traces of coffee grinds and leaves. And an ice cream stick! They add those into the coffee bags at work, and they breakdown eventually just like everything else.

A whole handful in worms from the compost pile, and there were hundreds more in there. Nice plump healthy worms means healthy soil, which makes for healthy and productive plants.

Coffee Grinds

So friends, the next time someone asks if coffee is good compost, you know what to tell them, because you have seen the results. If you want to see this happening in your garden, as it does for me, get some coffee grinds into your compost. The links below point to some of my articles that explain how to start getting into coffee grinds for plants and the garden.

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