Benefits and Dangers of COFFEE GROUNDS and WOOD ASH in the Garden // Beginning Gardening 

Funny coffee grounds story. I decided I could throw the coffee grounds over the deck, and eventually go collect it. And I got up, brewed, and drank my coffee at the same time everyday. I started noticing a mouse near the coffee grounds, no problem, I just ignored him. One day I slept in. He was outside waiting, and was yelling at me. i had a coffee addicted mouse.

garden and coffee ground story.. I used to have an open compost pile where I would put food scraps including coffee filters full of coffee grounds. One day when I went to dump more I noticed that some critter had cleaned out ALL the grounds leaving only the paper filter. I kept an eye on the pile and witnessed the local flock of crows taking turns cleaning out every spec of grounds. I then dubbed the pile "The Crow Cafe". One day when returning from town I got out of the car and was accosted by a barrage of screaming crows gathered around the Crow Cafe. I then realized I had not taken out the compost for 3 days and I was being informed that I was slacking on my duties.. After further thought I decided to enclose the compost pile so local wildlife could not get to the pile.. for their health reasons and because the last thing the neighborhood needed was a flock of caffeine addicted crows.

We struggled with blueberries on my property for many years, my husband simply gave up on them. Then, I discovered a nice trick. In the fall, I mulched the blueberry beds with a thick layer of green pine needles. Then, in the springtime when the buds are starting to fatten up, I “wake up” the blueberries by watering them with water steeped in one cup of fresh coffee grounds. The coffee brings the ph right to the perfect level. They’ve never looked better!

I actually got in trouble with my landlord a little, using coffee grounds as an amendment. I was just using my grounds from my morning filter press coffee, pouring it around the base of some fruit trees we had in the back yard. The rental contract had the landlord taking care of the trees, and he came to me a couple months later, asking what the hell happened to the trees, as they were fruiting so prodigously, some of the branches were close to breaking. When I told him what I had been doing, he was just like, "please stop".

One year I added homemade compost which had coffee grounds under a hydrangea. The resulting pH balance gave blooms that were half pink and half blue on the same blooms! Very beautiful and happy accident!

My Dad had a wonderful vegetable garden when I was a kid. The first year we lived there he rented a rototiller and taught us how to turn a 1/4 acre of our property into a garden breaking up the old sod that used to be part of the meadow out back. The soil was rich, nearly black and we discovered it went down about five feet before we hit a three foot layer of orange clay followed by all sand under that. We learned this when he dug the well. Fortunately he only had to dig down about nine feet before we hit water. Then my Dad went insane and started doing things that were absolutely crazy. Now we had moved in September so it was too late to plant that year. Everything we were doing was to prepare for the first year. When the town advertised that they were accepting bids to clean up the old bonfire pit behind the high school my dad underbid everyone and basically only bid enough to rent the truck. My brother, Dad and I spent every weekend until October shoveling ash into that truck. Then we'd drive home and dump it all into the garden and do it again. Before the first snow we hit another part of the property and my brother and I had to rake away about 1/4 acre of pine needles to expose what was under the needles. He called it pine "humus" but I'm not sure if that's the correct term. We must have made hundreds of trips with the wheel barrow dumping all that into the garden. Next my dad found out about a poultry farm that supplied most of the eggs to the town as well as powdered eggs to the military. When you are in the business of making powdered eggs you end up with a lot of shells. My Dad went to talk to the owner and nest thing I knew my brother and I were shoveling tons of broken chicken egg shells into drums. I'm glad we were only a quarter of a mile away. That's a long way to roll a 55 gallon steel drum for an 11 year old but egg shells don't weight much so it wasn't that heavy. finally the following February my mother had become friends with a woman who had horses. She'd kept horses there for a dozen years and had mounds of horse poop for each year she was there. She ran out of space and was going to hire someone to lug it all away. Well you guessed it. Dad made a deal with her and got the whole load and got paid for it to boot. We put the newest three mounds into our newly formed compost pile an took the other nine years worth and spread it into our garden. My Dad called the above mixture "Super Dirt." So anyways, between a heavier than usual early spring rain and a sunnier than usual late spring by July we were growing 7 foot tomato trees with two inch diameter stalks, Cucumbers the size of Zucchini and Zucchini the size of Watermelon. We had foot long green beans and Roma tomatoes that were six inches long. My mom had three foot marigold bushes. Our strawberries were the size of small apples and deep red to the core. And out of only about twenty corn stalks we got about 60 huge ears of corn. When my uncle came to visit (he's from Nebraska) he exclaimed that our garden was impossible and that he demanded to know from which secret government lab my Dad stole the corn seeds from. Dad grew about twenty other vegetables that I don't remember all of them and he mixed the soil additives differently for each patch of the garden. He did the whole thing very scientifically despite being functionally illiterate having struggled through six years of high school to come out with a C- average before being drafted for the Korean War. He had been raised on a farm with poor Cape Cod sandy soil and apparently learned a few tricks. One thing though. In subsequent years he always dumped the contents of the barbecue grill into the garden with no ill effects and he always grilled with charcoal briquets and that leads me to a question, why do you recommend not using charcoal briquets? You merely say don't use them but you don't explain why.

My wife has been dumping coffee grounds off the back porch, in the same spot for 20 years. Underneath are the largest night crawlers you have ever seen. Good fishing bait.

After planting a number of new pines in my backyard, I heard pines love coffee grounds. I started collected the grounds for a couple days at a time and then threw them on top of the soil under these new plantings. After just a couple years, the pines went from about 5 ft to 25 ft. I was amazed. I stopped after two or three years and started putting them, along with other vegetable scraps, into vermiculture compost bins. Those bins turned into a 5 ft diameter leaf, grass, and kitchen scrap pile. This large compost pile has now survived a couple cold winters. It creates enough heat to stay above 50 degrees which is fine for the worms. The only problem is the decomposition heat during the summer. When it gets to hot, I try breaking it up to slow down the chemistry. Several times, the temps have gotten as high as 140 degrees. I figured my worms were all dead. But, no, some seem to migrate to a bit cool spot where they survive. The final compost is fabulous.

Many years ago I lived in Tennessee and decided I was going to plant a dogwood tree in my yard. I dug a hole 4 in deeper than necessary, mixed used coffee grounds with rich soil to put in the bottom of the hole. I covered that with 2 in of soil and then made a mound to set my baby tree on. I think covered the rest of the root of the tree and watered well. With minimum maintenance I grew the most outstanding dogwood tree with the most brilliant pink flowers. It grew fast, tall and wide. All of those neighbors who told me that I could not grow a dogwood tree in that area of Tennessee were forever humbled because I told them I could and I did

Just want to say that everything presented here is fully substantiated by various scientific papers coming out of agricultural colleges and county extension agencies. You have obviously done your homework. We need more presentations like this. Keep up the good work.

I go to the local Cumberland Farms and get the full trash bags of grounds. They are more then happy to give them to you. I add this bag to my compost pile and allow it to be worked in over the next few months.

Another great video! For 4 years I had an extreme ant infestation inside my greenhouse. I decided to put a layer of coffee grounds from my coffee machine onto the surface of the soil as a mulch to see what would happen as I had 5 gallons of coffee grounds saved. To my surprise after one month there was only the odd ant that I found in my greenhouse. I did not mix the coffee grounds into the soil at all and cleared them from each planting hole when transplanting my vegetable starts. After 6 months I have only found about 4 ants in the greenhouse and for the first time in 5 years I have a bumper crop of tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers and my basil, chives, Italian parsley, Greek oregano, Rosemary and thyme are massive plants. Just thought that I would share my experience with you. Thanks again for the information.

Who needs a TV, when you can be doing this. Free fun, with education

I homeschool and we’re doing this next week. Howwww awesome!

My Grandpa used coffee grounds and wood ash in his garden for decades. In neutral soils, it's perfect. Other kitchen scraps should be mixed in, but it's the traditional method used for centuries on more than one continent.

I occasionally mix coffee grounds, egg shells and banana skins, whittled down in my blender, mixed with a little water to feed my indoor plants with. Its not something I do regularly, just every now and again and they seem to appreciate it. I have very healthy house plants lol. I never thought to do it in my garden but now I know. Thanks for sharing.

I thought he was going to say the best way to get ALL of the benefits of coffee in your garden is to sit back with a good cup of coffee in the morning, in your garden, and admire your plants. 🤣🤣

i've been using 1000 to 2000 pounds of coffee grounds from our local coffee shop on my large garden for several years and have encountered no problem, even though my soil is excessively acidic to start with...i also mulch heavily with maple leaves that i save over the winter & my yields far exceed those of conventional gardeners...

Just wanted to say thanks for warning about the wood ash. We live in Idaho and have a woodstove that is our heat in the winter, so we have a LOT of wood ash. I googled uses for wood ash and saw that you could use it on your garden, so two years ago (when this video was being made, actually) I made sure to liberally sprinkle every plant with wood ash when planting it. Our garden died. Like, D.E.A.D. I don’t think we got a darn thing out of it. Discouraged, I didn’t plant a garden this past year (2021). And then during late winter of this year (January 2022), I stumbled across the fact that wood ash will make your soil more alkaline. Now, I’ve never had my soil tested but I knew immediately what the problem was with my failed 2020 garden. Quick - think of a plant that’s associated with Idaho. Potatoes, right? Guess what kind of soil potatoes love? Alkaline. Our soil is already alkaline. Adding wood ash to it just sent it off the charts. 🤦🏻‍♀️ No wonder nothing grew. Now we sprinkle the wood ash into the compost bin when we add in new ingredients. Much better use for them in high alkaline Idaho. So I appreciate videos like this where you explain that wood ash isn’t just for every type of soil. If I’d known that, I probably would’ve had a thriving garden in 2020 and 2021. 2022 it is! Better late than never, right? 😄 Keep up the good work!

Coffee grounds make the worms do the wild thing at night, and you should see how much reproduction goes on. I would not use it nightly, more like once a month, but keeping it moist is a must. I got more worms this way than when I started out. I can honestly say, makes my worms love staying in their bin when I do add them.

My Grandfather always grew a huge garden. He used egg shells, coffee grounds, tea leaves, vegetable peels and ends from the kitchen, and leaves. He would let them sit and compost after each growing season until the next growing season.

I make many layers in my compost: hay from Craig's list for free...cold, old manure, not fresh... forest soil because of the microorganisms... sand for the worms...coffee grounds from the coffee shop... worms from an old pile... weeds,early summer weeds if you want to keep out the seeds... mulched leaves...algae scrapped off the surface of my pond... greens the local grocery store throws out. Keep it damp. You don't have to turn it. Add lots of greens just before winter and in any pile that the worms have depleted of them. Put layers of plastic and hay on top in the winter. I put three layers where I live because it gets down to 15 below zero. Use the piles you started first last Summer and you'll have great potting soil and compost.

I worked on a worm farm for 5 years. This was to 'grow the worms', then we graded, sorted them into Compost Starter Boxes or support boxes. We had a local Cafe that would keep the spent coffee grounds and we would add them to the worm beds. The beds were watered very well. Also we would add Lime and other "secret" ingredients. Coffee grounds helped the worms a lot. I don't know if the worms aquired an addiction to caffeine, but I doubt they did as they did not try to crawl out of the boxes in the cool area, unlike some brought crazy worms we had to buy as business was booooooming. Coffee grounds are a great usually free addition for worms, but remember to keep them in shade and wet a piece of carpet or something on top of the compost your worms live in. if it rains they will come to the top to avoid drowning and if its hot, they will need added moisture/ coolness

red cabbage is also a great pH indicator. Red cabbage contains a water-soluble pigment called anthocyanin that changes color when it is mixed with an acid or a base. The pigment turns red in acidic environments with a pH less than 7 and the pigment turns bluish-green in alkaline (basic), environments with a pH greater than 7.

I had lots of snails in my garden when I moved into our house... read in an old garden book that coffee grounds repel snails. I have been sprinkling our used coffee grounds on the garden over the last 3 years and it works a treat! No more snails 👍🐌

I've been just composting my moms "pods" coffee grounds (once I empty the pods contents) in my Compost Tumbler. And, with it all is scraps from veggies and fruit. Some leaves from fall and even some "bunny poo tea". I am not sure about adding any wood ash. It can be too alkaline for me to use without worrying about too high a PH in any soil I would add it too. Most plants that you would want to grow like an acid to neutral PH. I DO wonder IF the caffiene in the coffee grounds WOULD affect earth worms? I know that using "tobbacco" to the soil WILL possibly kill the earthworms, the nicotine. Now, I KNOW, many people will be thinking, "who would add tobbacco to soil?" My answer is that I had wondered about IF I could use my husbands snuff "left overs" since it is "organic matter". I know I should have figured out that all the leftovers from "snuff", would be a form of straight out "poison", from the nicotine. But, after I figured THAT out, I kinda wondered IF "Caffiene" could harm worms which we all NEED and WANT in our soils? Anyway, I do compost my moms "Kuerig pod" coffee grounds and it is just a small bit of my compost additions. Although soil SULFER CAN help your soil PH to get more acidic, It tales a LONG time before it will do the job, so, avoid wood ash in high Ph soil. OR if you want to grow blueberries. Sorry IF I repeated anything that the video maker already said. BTW, THIS easy soil PH check SHOULD be made into it's own video by "Next level gardening". Sorry if I seem pushy, BUT, it is just a really neat way to quickly and easily check your PH, and most people wouldn't see it since it is at the end of this video about using wood ash and coffee grounds in your soil. It would just be SUCH a help to most people who can't afford to do soil tests all over their yards and planting beds. At least as far as PH of soil, it would help many people know what adjustments if any they need to make.

Love when you two hang out doing videos.

I work in a grocery store with a small coffee shop inside of it and I have them save all the grounds in a bucket for me. I've been spreading them in my garden for years. My 67 year old aunt who's a veteran gardener tells me she's never seen plants grow so big and get so many flowers.

I always add the coffee grounds to my compost pile. But you are correct...the worms love them! They also help to loosen, or lighten my clay soil.

Thanx for posting! Also...don't forget EGG SHELLS! You have to crunch them up into smaller pieces...but they are wonderful for adding drainage when you sprinkle some on top and into the ground. Repels slugs and snails as well!

What a sweet boy- I hope he realizes how lucky he is to have a knowledgeable dad around who can teach him about plants!!

I live in the Fraser Valley where it's always raining. I have been spreading coffee grounds on my lawn. I've actually noticed a huge improvement. This is what attracted me to your channel.

I have been composting for at least 15 years. Adding used coffee and tree leaves bring the most improvement!

You & Noah are great together. You're blessed to have each other. Thanks for the info and the smiles.

Nice to see you and your son. He's adorable You are both very lucky.

I add coffee grounds to my hydrangea bush regularly, and it has huge deep purple blooms. It’s a rock star!

I have been using both in my compost for ages. I put compost tea under my new transplants and it seems to help them not go into shock too badly. Have not had any coffee grounds for over a year, seeing way more pests but also added some new plants. Brassicas don't do well here. Great info , thanks. I did not know blueberries love coffee grounds. Our dogs would also try to eat my gardens soil. They gave it up, when I took them off kibble. They eat whole foods now. No more eating the soil.

I would love to see more current videos and your son would be a marvelous bonus. 3 years older, of course. I love the informative videos you share. Thank you.

Your soil pH test is ingenious! So obvious to do, but I never thought of it. Thank you. Great show. Very informative. 😊😊😊😊😊😊😊

I had a “run away” cherry tomato, that rolled over to a pile of wood ash from my non fires. And it grew massive right next to the pile and much better than any of other tomatoes.

When I was a teenager, my father used to save up the coffee grounds and sprinkle them under our azaleas. I don't know what was going on chemically, but the azaleas absolutely loved it. The bloom production increased and the rate of growth increased as well. We had the most beautiful azaleas on the block, and it was mainly because of the regular depositing of coffee grounds beneath them.

the first garden I ever did, I put a bunch of ashes in the soil and the garden went nuts! best garden I have ever had. I have been chasing that success ever since.

I used my ashes from my fireplace where I don't want anything to grow weeds or plants and it works great.

10 Years ago I moved into a townhouse in Virginia. The backyard soil was hard as rock and actually filled with lots of granitite debris as a result of fill dirt when built. I removed the rocks to a large extent and found lots of clay and a higher than I wanted acid Ph. I spaded the yard (roughly 20'X20') and covered it with 4 inches of coffee grounds from Starbucks. I did this primarily because I know the few earth worms I found would thrive in it and I needed cheap organic matter to mix with the clay. Later I was told that I increased the acidity because of this, but you have explained I really did not. Since then, I have reduced the size of the planting area to just three small beds due to having such a small amount of sunlight here (tall house and trees block the sun). However, I have amended the soil each year with my own compost and it is easy to turn over now. My potatoes and asparagus love it.

Woodash is great for onions, garlic, and potatoes. Also always use distilled water for tests, cooking, and machinery if you can

One more on coffee grounds - ants. I get ant hills pop up occasionally - less often than before, but when I see one, I place a pot worth of brewed grounds over the top. Within a couple of days I can mow over that hill and no ants.

I would like to connect your discussion of coffee grounds with the wood ash that has biochar in it: make biochar out of coffee grounds! It solves most of the problems you mentioned and turns the carbon into a permanently stable structure that will amend your soil basically permanently. I use an old Dutch oven, fill it with any mix of coffee grounds, nut shells, wood chips and any other organic material, as long as it is very dried out. I get a roaring fire going in our woodstove and then prop the oven with the lid on, on top of an old metal grate. After 20 minutes, the gases are coming out of the pot and igniting. The heat generated is not wasted, it heats our home. And half the carbon remains in the material instead of going up the chimney, and can be wetted, innoculated and used to improve the soil, especially when planting trees and bushes. Gives them more resilience to drought. See RU-vid channel Edible Acres for a demo of doing this.

Great father and awesome son. Priceless.

It is so much fun to watch you with Noah in your videos. Your smile shows how proud you are as a father, and inspires me to do more gardening with my children. And we are absolutely going to do this soil test this weekend! Thank you for another great video!

We’ve been composting for 30 years, coffee has been a big part of that. We only use the ash to keep the compost dry, keeping it dry is the key to success. We also use chunks of gypsum, yes, old chunks of drywall, crush them up in a pail and feather them into the compost drum, cheers.

Used coffee grounds along with kitchen scraps dug directly into holes in the soil in my garden beds. I do this over the winter months in my mild, nearly frost- free area. There are sooo many earthworms in every forkful of soil in my garden beds this spring.

I’ve been using both for years and years. My garden is absolutely fantastic.

I sprinkle coffee grounds on top of beds in my front yard to deter the community cats from digging in there. When I lived at a house where there were hydrangeas in the yard, I sprinkled my coffee grounds under the hydrangeas to encourage blue color. The pink hydrangeas gradually turned purple and finally blue. I'm glad to know not to dig them in.

Great father and son. I actually lit up when I saw your son came up. Great work both, I learned something.

I just found your channel and really enjoyed my first video! I used to visit Starbucks regularly to pick up the grounds without even buying anything. I live near Seattle and we all heard that we should scatter coffee grounds around our rhodies and azaleas, even though the soil here is universally acid already. I never noticed that it made any difference to my plants, so I stopped doing it. You and your son remind me of my dad and me doing scientific experiments; he was a geologist and I became a medical microbiologist, a field which clothed, housed, and fed me for forty years! My mom encouraged my naturalist side by providing habitats for various caterpillar cocoon and chrysalis propagation, resulting in a lifelong interest in entomology (couldn't make a living in it, though). Keep up the tutoring of your son, especially outdoors.

Very good and well explained. Best bet is add coffee grounds to your compost pile and then after the compost breaks down, add to your garden. I would just get a test kit for the pH test. You have a great kid there! 👍🏼

After years of using and testing coffee grounds, i have found that after brewing, the grounds generally come out at about ph.5. Definitely acidic, although In saying that, it does take a lot of coffee grounds to affect the ph of your soil.

My grandparents were off the boat Germans & had 2 acres that they planted mostly gardens. Maybe half an acre of grass. My grandmother had me taking stuff out to the compost bin when I was 6. I remember her sprinkling fresh ground coffee around the azaleas by her front door. I had forgotten so much that this video reminded me of. Thank you. They were happy memories.

I use coffee grounds in my compost and it’s been super beneficial to my plants in that form. It breaks down pretty quickly which is nice too. I use the bokashi method for all my kitchen scraps. I made my own bucket with a spigot and use the liquid (200:1 dilution) as a liquid fertilizer as well. The plants love it too!

What a doll! Your son is so fun, like you. Loved this video. What great tips!!! Thanks!

I use coffee grounds in very large quantities, 10-15 gallons at a time, in my garden. It has many beneficial effects. I have very alkaline soil. I use coffee grounds to increase the acid in the soil. I mix them into the soil. I add nitrogen in the way of ammonium sulfate to provide the extra nitrogen that the coffee grounds consume as the decompose, and to add acid. The sulfate in the ammonium sulfate increases the acidity by combining with water to create a weak sulfuric acid solution. As the coffee bits mix with water and decompose, the carbon decays back into Carbon Dioxide. Some of the carbon diaoxide combines with water and forms a weak acid, which I believe is called carbonic acid. Other benefits of coffee ground in the soil include a substantial improvement in the friability of the soil and an increased ability to hold and release water to plants. If you apply a thick layer of coffee to the soil it will repel water for a season, but then it all breaks down and the water gets through. For this reason I prefer to actually mix the coffee grounds into the soil to a depth of about 6-8 inches. I also use biochar, formerly known as charcoal, in my garden, along with wood ashes. Yes, you have to beware of its increased alkalinity, but I am frequently amending the soil to increase the acidity anyway, so why throw away all that potassium? I use a combination of ammonium sulfate, leaf mold, coffee grounds, compost, and elemental sulfur to increase the acidity in my garden soil. I really liked your soil pH test to get a rough idea as to the soil pH.

I do know that beans don't like coffee grounds as a top dressing, because most raised beds also have peat moss, which also adds acidity. The reason is that beans are a nitrogen fixer but don't do well with too much nitrogen...which means you will want to add hydrogenated garden lime according to your package directions. My beans love it and I definitely don't add acidic items of any kinds and am transitioning to coir. Until then the peat in my raised beds is counteracted by the lime, hopefully. Beans are doing swell. Thank you for the excellent adviced on composting. I had been afraid that my grounds would just go to waste in the pile in comparison to top-dressing around plants. HOWEVER: apparently slugs HATE coffee grounds. Thank you for not just doing the typical youtube vids that are all blabber and no real info.

Love how you do your pH test, that is so cool, if you have no other methods. Much prefer the more accurate solution myself. Tomatoes like a more acidic soil, so using pine straw mulch is a sure winner. Last year, I had a very neutral pH, around 7.5 and tomatoes were struggling but added some gypsum, a few pinches of sulfur and potassium nitrate and that made a significant difference. Planted in early August, still got a bountiful harvest in zone 4; imagine that. Funny how all the ingredients in black powder are actually used, in some capacity, as fertilizers.

I planted my first vegetable garden ever today! I mixed the coffee grounds right in to the dang soil. I should have watched this video 5 hours earlier.

I sprinkle use spent coffee grind on each side of my carrots to repel rust flies. Since I've been doing this, I no longer have problems with wormy carrots.

I have used coffee grounds in a dense soil, like clay, because I think it helps keep the clay not as compact - used grounds. A #10 for your video

My dad used to take the ashes from the wood stove and use them in his food garden. I now own my own home and it's been almost a year. It is very much still winter here in Maine but I will be growing in large totes up on the deck so that I can participate in my gardening as I am in a wheelchair. :-)

My father burns every year in the tomato patch after we harvest. In that spot tomatoes grow bigger, more bountiful and have more volunteers. I will say the soil was also manure compost originally from years ago. The comparison was between a compost and burn bed vs a clay dirt natural bed. That clay beds gone now and a garage built over it but it did grow green beans very well.

I use egg shells also, however, since it does tend to take a long time for the shells to breakdown in the compost and since the calcium is not readily available when added directly what I do is add them to my wood fire. When I add the ash to my compost I am assured that the compost will get the benefits of the calcium immediately.

If your dog is eating dirt that means your dog needs minerals because the food that we feed our pets is nutritional deficient in the best thing to do is feed your dog raw meat and organ meat because in the organ is where a lot of minerals are for dogs and cats. If you notice in the wild When Animals take down an animal they eat the guts first because that's where all the minerals are. Hope that information helps to figure out why your dog eats dirt

We used to use wood ash in our garden in rural Maine, because the dirt needed lime.

I collect ash and coffee grounds over the year and apply them to the garden in autumn when I prepare the garden for winter. I never had a problem. However, I spread them out over a relatively large are.

Sensible, informative, interesting and how cute the segment with your son. Gardening for decades yet there's always more to learn.

Houston: collected bags of coffee grounds from the HEB supermarket. spread on the soil during the fall for two weeks then turned it under. Rotate the soil, several times before planting at beginning of March. Explosive improvement in growth, greenness and output which I attribute to the trace minerals as many coffees are grown in rich, mountain or volcanic soils. cherry tomatoes, squash, basil, cilantro.

Love the son Dad presentation 💖

Our front yard was all strawberries and we’d throw wood ash, eggshells, and coffee grounds on the soil in the winter. We got great strawberries. The neighbors hated it, as our yard didn’t look like their Ortho-destroyed yards. They loved our strawberries, though.

A few hours before I watched this video, I called Sbux, asked if they had grounds for gardening, then did and the lady brought them to the door for me. Just call ahead when you are close during covid, and you can still score!

I've used coffee grounds in my garden and around trees for years. Luckily I've not had any negatives. I now know how to properly apply thanks to Brian.

We burn about 2 cords a year and I save all the ash for the gardens and compost. However, it works best if spread only lightly. A sprinkling of woodash on the area where I last grew tomatoes and peppers really helps the next growing cycle. I do not grow tomatoes or peppers in the same place 2 years in a row. The woodash works wonders in the pollinator/native plants gardens.

Especially love ph testing... It removes the mystery of analyzing your garden problems. Home solutions are so very helpful❤

I used to throw out my coffee grounds out in the dirt of my hydrangeas and for some reason it helped with the changing of the colors of the flowers. I must say they where stunningly beautiful. So now I always do that. I did it like once maybe twice per week. Just threw them out with a bit of extra water and that's it. Worked great for me on them that's for sure. Much luck to everyone ✌

My compost was amazing with lots of coffee grounds from a cafe after about 8 months . But , when I used it as a mulch , not so good . And when I sprinkled it on my geraniums in pots , all their leaves died immediately !! I quick cleaned all the grounds off the top layer of the pots and then flushed water through the pots as best I could , almost drowned the plants but they lived and got new leaves pretty quickly .

Good video. Regarding coffee grounds. It also helps prevent the soil from becoming hydrophobic, which is a problem with using bagged soil in hot climates. Of course, this requires mixing it in with the soil. To mitigiate the issue nitrogen tie-up from the soil, mix the grounds into the soil the prior to the growing season, allowing enough time for breakdown. And don't exceed an 80% (soil) to 20% (grounds) mix. Also, I've found that coffee grounds repel/kill grubs. I placed a layer of coffee ground on the surface of a 20 gallon fabric pot. The next day I found six grubs dead on the surface. Apparently even on the surface the grounds managed to release a grub repellent down into the soil forcing the grubs to seek escape, howbeit an unsuccesful attempt. So, in addition to repelling slugs and other vegetable damaging pests, it seems to work on grubs as well from the top down.

Thanks guys I use stove Ash all the time for my tobacco plants straight up it works great have a bumper crop every year I just mix them in with the soil

Here in the desert southwest in the USA (I live in Las Vegas) we have very heavy, rocky clay soils. You don't generally want to plant in that stuff, but rather build up a good layer of rich topsoil. However, the heavy clay soils underneath can still play a part. When you are preparing your beds, mix in all sorts of yard waste and coffee grounds. The coffee grounds help with the high alkalinity of our soils here, but more importantly, allow for much better water drainage and keep the soil from packing quite so hard. Since you're packing lots of good topsoil above it, the heavy clay underneath isn't nearly as important, and things that might be a problem elsewhere, actually work well here. So dump in the coffee grounds and grass clippings by the pound and bury it down deep. It won't be a huge nutrient boost, but it will keep your topsoil healthier.

I even use left over plain coffee diluted greatly with water to help my plants flowers & veggies & it works great!

I use coffee grounds for my acid loving trees and plants. I’ve also used pine needles as mulch for the dogwood and rose of Sharon tree. Millions of blooms where I only had one bloom on the dogwood the first year I lived here.

I use wood ash in the garden every year. 1 quart per 3'X3' area of garden space is a good general rule. All plants thrive when wood ash is applied. When everything is in balance with your soil you don't need to worry about soil ph anymore

I always throw my spent coffee grounds along with the brown paper into my compost. Works well for me.

Thanks for noting the science behind using the coffee grounds. I have been using coffee grounds for years. Infact, I went to a couple of coffee shops / deli and asked for them to save the pickle buckets for me and if they could just dump the daily coffee grounds in the buckets and set them out back. I would come by every other day or so and pick them up. In exchange, I would donate produce from my garden to those who need it. I did this through my neighbors and taking produce to Church. I ended up with applying several 5 gallon buckets to my gardens over the fall and winter. I mixed it in with some wood chips, Manure, Sea90 minerals and a few other nutrients. Then sprinkled some over the top as well. If you like the smell of coffee, every time it rains, you will have a beautiful smell of coffee in the garden.

I once bought some dirt from Home Depot to put in some pots and I used to use those to grow flowers mostly. However I once used two of those pots to try to grow mangos. Both plants germinated and started to grow, however, they stop growing by the time they reached about 30 cm (one foot). So, i just happen to brew coffe daily, so I started to pour the brewed coffee grounds to those pots and to my surprise both plants grew like crazy, one of them is almost man size by now. I think that besides of the nutrients it has to do with humidity retention, those varieties of mangos grow in semi-tropical areas and I live in Mexico city so it is much dryier and colder, but enough sunlight and those coffee grounds seem to have done the trick.

My berry bushes, (red and black raspberry and currant) LOVE coffee grounds. I had a transplanted red currant that had died back to only two sad stems with a few leaves. I added coffee grounds around the plant in mid-summer. After that, it put up new stems, leaves and actually produced a few currants. Years later, it is my largest and most productive red currant bush. My raspberries grow hugely large canes and produce in profusion.

Such a complete set of info, not just a "hey I use this and it works, follow what I do" that kills my plants.

The coffee grounds seem to act like catnip to worms in my compost piles.

I’ve been using ash for a couple of years. You’re right, my plants have been pretty big. Thanks for the tip on checking ph levels.

I put some on top of my potted plants in the house and my plants are flourishing.

Soil Amendment for me, being a Florida Resident, is a BIG Deal. Getting it just right for the designated Plant, Bush, Trees needs are truly a Science. Thank you for all the good info on it.

I put coffee grounds in my mulch pile for use the next year

Living next to wetlands, slugs are a constant bane to the garden, whether ground level, raised bed, or container. Water that soaks coffee grounds, strained of solids and put in a spray bottle, deter slugs big time. Even in containers, I can see their slime trails working their way up the sides, coming to the line of dried coffee water, and after following the coffee line looking for a way up into the container, they make a U-Turn back down onto the ground again. Coffee grounds around an ant or termite hole ... they will make another entrance rather than even try to move coffee grounds from their door. Dried coffee grounds has been a great carpenter ant hill treatment at the foundation of the cabin. I use a French press, so the grounds are almost powder, which makes a pancake dust over their hills. It seems to do quite well in that form. To collect and decant grounds, I use a resale Tupperware orange juice container with spout, and dump my French press grounds in it. Every few days I use the narrow pour spout to slowly decant coffee water through an ultra fine mesh black zipper bag (usually for laundry) and the water transferred into a spray bottle for slugs, and the solids suspended in the mesh bag in the sun to dry. The coffee spray goes on the ground and on containers around my plants to deter slugs. The dry grounds - now reduced to powder patty - is crushed and dumped on carpenter ant/termite hills around the foundation. The caveats are don't spray on buds or flowers or leaves because it can also kill your pollinators. Just soak spray the stems at the soil and leaves touching soil, and the soil itself at the base, to deter caterpillars and slugs from climbing up to eat leaves. And it will have to be renewed now and then after rains, but you'll have plenty in supply. Coffee water in spray bottles has to be free of tiny solids because they'll ruin the sprayer. Ask me how I know after throwing out three of them. Your best sprayers are the cheap dollar store cleaning agent bottles, not the designer ones that clog too easy such that spray goes everywhere except straight out. Thoroughly dried and powdered coffee grounds in an old Dawn dish soap bottle with snap cap puffs coffee dust out radially in a fine dust spray for the soil around beds. I found just dumping wet powdered grounds looks very much like a diarrhea patty that won't go away all winter snow and after many rains. I finally had to rake it smooth so it didn't look so disgusting on the bare flower bed, and visitors didn't think someone at my house did it that way on purpose. :D Like I said, wetlands are a constant source of slugs at night, but coffee seems to keep them efficiently at bay. Apropos of nothing, the dawn dish soap puffer trick also works well to dust baking soda along baseboards for indoor roaches and ants, (NO sugar added, it's not necessary!). It's safe for house pets. How it works: Bicarb dust collects on feelers and legs, and after grooming their bodies, the CO2 expands and breaks their exoskeletons (body armor) and they dehydrate from the inside out. I did this in a Detroit city apartment for a week - while blocking vermin entrances around pipes/wires, under doors, and baseboard gaps, and that was end of my roach problem for years while my neighbors remained overrun. Science is brilliant. Just sayin'.

I just received 1-2 tons of soil from a local cotton gin that has parts of cotton plants after harvest and peanut plant parts after harvest. I am using that for my first garden. Can’t wait to test the PH in that soil.