If you have a coffee machine at home, you already know how many coffee grounds you need to go through weekly. Coffee grounds are the leftovers of the coffee once it’s been through a machine, but you don’t need to throw them away - you can use them in the garden instead. Grounds are organic matter that breaks down into compost, so instead of sending the coffee grounds to the rubbish bin, you can reuse them in your garden.

How Do Coffee Grounds Help The Garden?

There are many ways leftover coffee beans can be reused in the garden, and we will go over the details. Still, to put things more simply, they make great mulch, helping you fertilise your compost heap, creating nitrogen, scaring off cats and slugs and may even help make the soil more acidic.

If you don’t own a coffee maker, then in most supermarket cafes or similar places, they will have bags of leftover coffee grounds. When they’re not bagging them up, you should ask if they can give you some; in most cases, they’ll be happy to get rid of them.

Improve Your Soil

Coffee is a natural material breaking down into organic matter, improving soil and water retention, drainage and aeration. Soil full of organic matter attracts earthworms, further improving and aerating them. Crumbling soil means your plant roots can spread into a more stable and wider base, sucking up more nutrients and growing stronger. This leads to bigger and healthier plants.

How Your Soil Improves by Using Coffee Grounds

You can sprinkle coffee grounds across your border and dig them in. They will break down and improve your soil, attracting earthworms, as mentioned above. Earthworms will reach up to pull the coffee grounds into the soil, as they do with bits of fallen leaves.

Boosting The Compost Heap

Coffee grounds and used coffee filters may be composted and offer a great addition to your compost pile. As the coffee grounds rot away, they release their nutrients and create a rich compost you can use all around your garden.

How to Compost Coffee Grounds

Coffee grounds look brown, but you need to treat them like any green waste. Green waste is nitrogen-rich, fleshy, leafy leftovers, unlike brown waste that is dry - cardboard, straw, and old leaves. You should go for at least 25-50% green waste in your compost heap to keep the reaction going. Remember to turn it regularly to let air in. You must add more brown waste if it smells or starts looking slimy.

Create Mulch

Mulch is an excellent addition to your garden. If you have a sun-baked garden, a weedy one or a chalky one, it doesn’t matter as long as you have shrubs, flowers, trees or vegetables, then mulch will help them grow. Mulch benefits you in quite a few ways - it blocks out light, so weeds will die off without having a chance to take root, but it also traps moisture around the roots, protecting your soil by preventing winds and rain from stripping the topsoil. Mulch can be made from compost, straw, manure, rubber shreds or even stones. Some of these may be more expensive and require replacement yearly, but you can add coffee grounds to the list, as they will give you plenty of free mulch.

How To Use Coffee Grounds As Mulch

Coffee grounds will form a blanket over the soil that keeps moisture in and suppresses weeds. You can spread them around the base of your plants for optimal effect, but you should keep in mind that some gardeners consider them too fine and capable of compacting and forming a solid barrier. Solid mulch is bad for your plants, as it locks out rain and air.

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