Grounds for Gardens
May 6, 2010
I wanted to take a moment to educate everyone about our Grounds for Gardens Initiative. With one of our mandates being environmental responsibility and waste being a personal pet peeve, we are trying to find homes for our coffee grounds in your compost. Thankfully I have a new garden I’m working on which has already consumed multiple 5 gallon buckets of grounds however we produce much more then I can dispose of personally.
So why put coffee grounds in your garden?
It’s a great compost additive, working as a soil enhancer creating richer compost! Coffee grinds have a high carbon to nitrogen level. For which the Acidity will create a good texture to the compost without making your soil much more acidic as the compositing process creates a neutral pH level. Also worms love coffee as much as we do and the grounds promote activity, making your compost process quicker. This also works if you want to increase activity in your garden by adding coffee with your soil as a top layer which will keep the worms working harder (sounds like they have similar correlation between effectiveness at work and their caffeine intake as I do). Some plants that particularly like coffee grounds are those that like higher levels of acidity such Hydrangeas, Blueberries, Daffodils, Spring Bulbs, Cardinals, Cranberries, Rhododendrons, Spruce and Oak to name a few. However any garden can benefit from coffee grounds.
Pest Control
There’s contradicting theories between Pest Control and if there’s an effect. The theory behind it’s benifits are that a concentration of caffeine will kill slugs. Thankfully coffee grounds do not have a high enough concentration to actually kill the slugs, but that the concentration of caffeine left in ground coffee is a slug and snail deterrent which if sprinkled around tender plants and veggies will keep the evil villains away. However, many also argue that the concentration of caffeine in brewed coffee grounds isn’t significant enough to have an effect as the brewing process removes most of the caffeine so we can reap the benefits of it : ). If anyone has personal experience using coffee grounds as pest control I’ll love to hear the results or lack there of.
A few tips, for composting coffee grounds.
1) Mix your grounds with approximately equal amounts of potting soil and add bit of water to create a fast acting fertilizer
2) Ring plants with coffee grounds before watering or rain to create a source of nitrogen and create a pest deterrent. Aside from slugs and snails many claim that it will deter cats and other animals as well.
3) You can dry the coffee grounds and work them into the soil around acid loving plants.
4) For composting don’t worry about throwing the coffee filters in. They are biodegradable and will compost quickly as well
5) Ron from www.urbanfarmer.ca recently suggested using grounds as a growing medium for mushroom cultivation, particularly oyster mushrooms. Simply place the grounds in a plastic bags and mushroom spawn is mixed. Keep it in a moist and dark place and a harvest should be had in a 3 to 6 months time.
I’ll end on the note if you want to take advantage of some free composting materials please bring us a bucket with your name and phone # and we will call you as soon as it’s filled and ready to be picked up!
Great, I never knew this, thanks.
[...] top young artists, I’m getting some interest in my Grounds for Gardens campaign (http://www.goodearthsummerside.ca/grounds-for-gardens/), and have been getting some exposure from other local media agents such as http://www.greenedmonton.ca, [...]
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