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Coffee Grounds as feed?

steve howesteve howe Posts: 55
edited May 2018 in The potting shed
This may be an old wives tale, but I am told that spent coffee grounds are a good source of plant nutrients. There's been a lot of discussion on here as to their use as deterrents for slugs (they don't work) and other pests, but it would be interesting to know if they make any appreciable difference to nutrient levels. I googled coffee grounds and they appear to be high in nitrogen, so I applied some to a tray of Zinnia seedlings and to six small Helenium plants that had been chewed to the ground by snails, and they are indeed romping away. I suppose the proper test would be to sow two identical trays and treat one and observe the result.

Posts

  • Valley GardenerValley Gardener Posts: 2,851
    They've worked as a slug deterrent for me so far,fingers crossed! No sign of chewing on my Hostas.I've put a mulch of grounds round my Rhododendron as I read that Acid loving plants benefit,any way we'll see!
    The whole truth is an instrument that can only be played by an expert.
  • ThankthecatThankthecat Posts: 421
    My OH started work as an espresso machine engineer in November last year and since then he's come home every now and then with a 10 litre tub of coffee grounds for me. Most of it gets added to the compost heap but I have experimented with circles of it around plants that slugs and snails like. It does seem to help, and we have millions of the bloody things! I hadn't thought about using it to feed seedlings Steve - did you just mix it in with the compost when you potted them on?
  • AsarumAsarum Posts: 661
    https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2016/oct/23/coffee-grounds-are-not-good-for-plants-its-a-myth

    I think James always talks a lot of sense, see him on Twitter.
    East Anglia
  • FireFire Posts: 19,096
    Yes, good for composting, bad for soil if put on directly.
  • Blue OnionBlue Onion Posts: 2,995
    I stuff all my coffee grounds down the vole holes in my garden.. hoping maybe the caffeine gives them a heart attack or makes them so hyper they run off at high speeds to someone else's garden.  
    Utah, USA.
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