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

so during these times when we're really not supposed to be leaving the house it's nice to find alternative uses for things that would otherwise go in the trash today I may be talking about two soil amendments that you probably got laying around the house possibly ready to throw away however both of these things come with strong warnings so stay tuned [Music] if this is your first time here and you are looking to join a garden community that offers tips tricks and support to grow your best garden ever then start now by clicking subscribe and hitting the bell so you're notified every time we upload a video which is three times a week Sunday Tuesday and Friday now let's get growing today we're going to be talking about using wood ash and coffee grounds in the garden now if you've had experience with either one of these good or bad let us know down in the comments now I've been using both in my garden for years and they offer some really great benefits however they also come with some serious side effects that may or may not make them good for your garden so we're going to talk about that plus if you stick around to the end I'm going to show you a really cool fun test to see what the pH is in your garden soil and you don't have to go out and buy anything okay we're gonna start with coffee grounds now if you've been to Starbucks lately well probably not lately but in the recent past then you've probably seen a bucket of bagged used coffee grounds near the door now if you didn't grab that bag and run then you probably aren't aware of the benefits that coffee grounds provide to your garden soil now they're not really a strong fertilizer coming in with an M PK of nitrogen 2.1 phosphorous 0.3 and potassium 0.3 plus the nitrogen doesn't break down in the soil for a while so it's not immediately available to your plants but it does offer some really great trace elements such as magnesium copper calcium manganese zinc and iron plus they're a really good source of organic matter that worms absolutely love and they're really beneficial to the microorganisms that live in your soil however to apply it you don't want to mix it in with the soil because what happens is when you mix it into the soil and the microorganisms are working to break it down it's actually taking nitrogen from your soil for that process and so it can stunt your plant's growth until the coffee grounds are completely broken down by the microorganisms another reason you don't want to dig it into the soil is if there's any caffeine left in it caffeine can stunt your plant's growth as well now speaking of caffeine if you've got pets like boomer here that tend to eat the soil in your garden you're weird then you want to make sure that you sprinkle the coffee grounds in an area where the dogs or other pets can't get to because caffeine is detrimental to their health at least until it's had a few waterings to leach some of that caffeine out now one myth out there that you might have heard of is that coffee grounds when you add them to your garden it actually will increase the acidity of the soil that's actually not true unless it is unroot coffee grounds once it's brewed the acid in the coffee grounds is actually in your cup of coffee and it leaves the grounds themselves pretty much pH neutral so it's not going to raise the acidity around your plants now if you want to raise the acidity around certain plants like azaleas or blueberries then you can sprinkle some unused fresh coffee grounds around those but otherwise it's not gonna make much difference in your soil pH so just in case I haven't balanced out the positives with the negatives I have one more negative for you but before I before I tell you that just know that I'm going to give you a way to negate all the negatives keep the positives and be able to use coffee grounds in your garden no matter what so one more negative is that if you put a layer a thick layer of coffee as a mulch it actually can repel water because of its ability to cake together and make kind of a hard surface so if you're gonna sprinkle it just a little sprinkling over the top not a heavy mulch so I have I confused you enough where you really aren't sure whether you should bother adding coffee grounds to your garden if so that might be okay because really the best way that you can use coffee grounds in your garden which takes advantage of all the positive things we talked about and gets rid of all the negative things we talked about is to add them to your compost bin or your compost heap adding coffee grounds to your compost bin is a really great way to invigorate a cold pile the small particle size of the coffee grounds and their nitrogen content really gets the the microorganisms back to work to create that heat that you need to make a really good compost now even though they're brown in color they actually are considered a green when adding them to your compost heap green versus a brown mix now if you want to get more information on that and kind of what you need for that I did a video back in November which I will link below five steps to great compost so keep a container in the kitchen that you can just throw your your coffee grounds in once you're moving on to the next day's coffee or once things start getting back to normal you can go and frequent some of the coffee shops in your area and a lot of them are going to have free grounds for you to take with you okay if you've learned something so far please do me a favor and give the video a thumbs up that just lets YouTube know that there's something of value here and they'll push it out to other people looking for the same information takes two seconds alright on to our second subject and that is wood ash now here in the northern hemisphere we are coming to the end some places it is the end of the cold season and your fireplace might be piling up with ash so it can be ashes from a fireplace or wood burning stove or if you have a fire pit what you're left with after a fire is ash there's a couple things in this ash you've got the white stuff that's very very fine and you've also got this very lightweight remnants of the wood and this is biochar both of these ingredients in ash are very beneficial to your garden especially growing food the NPK of wood ash comes in at 0 1 3 so it's got a high level of potassium or potash now potassium or potash is really important for those of us growing food because it actually increases the size and quality of the fruits and vegetables that we are growing now like I said the black remains in here little chunks are biochar and there's actually a way to make a bunch of high quality biochar on its own in your fireplace and I might do a video about that in the future now biochar is a fantastic ingredient for the garden because microscopically it is very complex with pores and it's got a ton of surface area in fact a single gram is thought to have the surface area of one thousand square yards so it gives a lot of surface area and little holes and nooks and crannies for a ton of microorganisms and fungi to live to be able to help process all of those micronutrients in your soil and increase the absorption of the nutrients as well now all that being said I can't use this directly into my garden because unlike coffee grounds wood ash can have a dramatic effect on your soils pH and if you have an alkaline soil like I do it's gonna make it more alkaline and if you don't know what pH your soil is there are ways to do it but one way is what I'm gonna show you right after this you don't have to go out and buy any fancy gadgets or tests in fact all of the things you need which is like three are probably in your kitchen right now so stay tuned just a couple seconds longer and I'm going to go through that process it's really simple and it's fun so if you find out you have acidic soil wood ash is great for you because not only you're gonna get all the benefits that I was talking about directly into the soil it's gonna actually bring your pH into a level that's more neutral which most of the fruits and vegetables we love really like and another plus is the nitrogen in the wood ash has been completely burned up so it's not gonna Rob from the soil like the coffee grounds will so you can mix it right in you can sprinkle it on either way it would be fine one word of warning though if you have blueberries growing in your garden they like acid do not put this anywhere near the blueberries I would also keep it away from your tomato plants because while they don't like is that much acid as blueberries they do like their soil a little bit on the acidic side acidic to neutral but just keep it away from both of those two and you should be fine for the rest of us add it to your compost it's a great addition because it's gonna do all the benefits that we talked about but it's also getting that biochar is going to give lots more space for all those good bugs in your and your compost heap to hang out while they're turning your precious yard waste into even more precious beautiful black compost now just a quick note on what types of wood not to use for your wood ash it would be black walnut wood which has an ingredient that's harmful to plants any wood that's been painted or treated and then you don't want to use like the charcoal briquettes that you get for your barbecue so a lot of this advice hinges on whether your soil has a pH that is neutral alkaline or acidic but how do you know so there are some test kits that you can buy there are pH meters that you could stick into the soil and has a digital readout but soil pH in civic areas don't really change that often from month to month or even year to year so buying a gadget to me it's just kind of a waste so what I'm gonna do right now is a simple fun test it's not going to give you an exact number but it's going to give you a pretty good approximation and in my opinion that's all I really need so first you need to take a soil sample and it's good to get a little bit from different areas in your garden so you kind of get an overall view instead of you know maybe something actually in this area was making one part of it a certain way and you're gonna split that soil sample into two jars or any kind of container works but I'm using clear for presentation purposes now me three more ingredients you need a bottle of water and we're using bottled water because bottled water is pH neutral unless it's marketed as an alkaline water don't use that and drink that that don't use it for this test we're gonna using vinegar and it can be white vinegar which is the cheapest kind I'm assuming apple cider would be the same but this is our acid and we're using baking soda for the opposite end of the pH spectrum so the first thing we're gonna do is we're going to add water just above the level of the soil in each one of the jars and stir them around a little bit okay now here's where it gets fun this is where you might want to grab a kid alright so Noah's back he's gonna help us with this experiment it's gonna be kind of fun so what we want to find out is if acid or the baking soda is going to react with our solution here so we're gonna start with the acid first now if you have an acid soil there is nothing for this solution the acid solution to react with so it's pretty much gonna do nothing if you have an alkaline soil it's going to start to bubble and fizz because it's reacting to the opposite pH in the jar so you want for some of this in there so do we have bubbles can you hear enough any fizzing yeah and it's bubbling a little bit too yeah so if you have a little fizz like we do that means you've got a soil that is more on the alkaline style side now if you have a lot of fizz that means your soil is really far to the alkaline side so this is a little bit closer to neutral alkaline alright you ready to try this one alright so now we're gonna add the baking soda alright is it fizzing yes it is not the same as the other right yeah so we've got about the same fizz in both so what does that tell you that tells you it's probably pH neutral right in the middle because we didn't get a huge strong reaction either way now if you've got a kid like me or you're a big kid yourself it might be fun it might be fun to mix the two yeah alright pour this one into this more that's so cool it looks like coke it does it's kind of like when you shake up a coke bottle and then when you like open it and all like yeah if you liked this video be sure to hit the subscribe button hit the like button and if you want to see more videos with me and with my dad you can hit the post notification bell and that mate has you like see ya and then when things come out yeah and my dad's Instagram will be right up there for you guys see you next time

Channel: Next Level Gardening

Views: 1,251,894

Rating: 4.9492159 out of 5

Keywords: coffee grounds for the garden, coffee grounds for plants, wood ash for the garden, wood ash for plants, coffee grounds for garden, gardens, gardening tips, coffee grounds in garden, wood ash in the garden, gardening, fertilizer, organic fertilizer, potassium for plants, organic, plants, alkaline soil, can i use coffee grounds in the garden, Can i use wood ash in the garden, compost, gardening for beginners, compost tea, organic gardening, compost bin, vermicompost, compost pile

Id: R674BCIVLk0

Length: 16min 15sec (975 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 10 2020