What Happens When You Use Coffee Grounds in the Garden?

what's going on Grover's James because you're only coming to you live from Jersey some of you have been following a channel for years and you know that a woodchip mulch is one of my favorite ways to aid microbes and fertilizing the soil but I like to use other amendments as well to improve the quality of the soil so today I want to show you what happens when you use coffee grounds in the garden let's go because I have an organic gardeners mindset I'm always looking for free local resources that are natural to help benefit the garden while also keep them from going to waste like the old saying goes one person's trash is another person's treasure I guess it's just about perspective and how you use it I myself am a coffee drinker so whenever I have a cup I saved the use grounds this way I can apply them to the garden at this time of the year use coffee is a great fertilizer for the garden because it's high in nitrogen it also has small amounts of phosphorus and potassium as well as some very small amounts of trace mineral there are a few ways to use coffee grounds so that they'll be beneficial in your garden and for your plants so what I'm gonna do is show you some of those ways and then show you how I actually use coffee grounds in the gardens my favorite way one way I like to use coffee grounds in my garden is by lightly broadcasting the coffee grounds over top of my mulch under some of my plants like this blueberry right here I don't suggest using coffee grounds solely as a mulch though or even burying the coffee grounds and there's a few reasons why first of all if coffee grounds are used solely as a mulch they can form a mat when they dry out and actually make it hard for that soul to even absorb any water also the nitrogen and coffee grounds in the form that it's in isn't immediately available to be taken up by the plants first it has to be converted by microorganisms into a different form in addition where it can be taken up by the plants also used coffee grounds can still contain small traces of caffeine which can actually deter plant growth which is something we definitely do not want the second and main way that I like to use coffee grounds in the garden is my favorite way to do it the way that I do it most of the time and this is how we can avoid a lot of the issues that one could run into the way that I do that is by adding them to my compost pile fortunately I already have a compost pile started that's one of the reasons that I like to add the coffee grounds to the garden into the compost pile this time of year and also by adding them to the compost pile we're setting up the perfect scenario for those microorganisms to go in and convert this non available nitrogen in the coffee to available nitrogen so let me set these used coffee grounds down we're gonna add them into the compost pile I have already added some but we're gonna add more I wanted to get it cooking a little bit so you guys could see what that would look like but one thing you'll notice I've said throughout the video is that there used coffee grounds we want it these are the ones we want to use the ones that have been used in processed before because some people talk about how coffee grounds can be acidic but the thing is when we have used coffee grounds the acidity in coffee is actually water soluble so by first processing them and making coffee with them we're actually getting rid of lot of that acidity the Sydney is going in the cup instead of in our compost pile or in our garden so used coffee grounds actually have an acidity of about six point five to six point eight which is pretty neutral when it comes down to it as I start opening up this compost pile you'll start to see that we've got some steam coming out of it because this is cooking it's creating all the heat and this is created by all those microorganisms in there so this is gonna be a perfect scenario for adding those coffee grounds in and converting the nation so it's readily available for the plants to take on homemade compost is by far my favorite fertilizer my favorite thing to add to the garden well made I mean you just can't beat it when it comes to growing homegrown or when it comes to making your compost everything done by yourself seems to be better just to be safe though I want to come so there's Sidney the coffee if you're gonna be broadcasting in the garden like I was doing earlier I suggest that you basically just broadcast at around plants that are acid loving for instance those blueberries that I showed you I like to just be safe and I don't like to add any too many extreme things to the garden but as you can see now I'm broadcasting this coffee into the compost pile and then what we'll do is we'll mix that up or not mix that just add some water to it because we want to make sure this compost is wet a lot of these microorganisms they can only live in this wet condition they're more like almost aquatic microorganisms they live on the film and the water inside of that so I want to make sure it's relatively wet and I have some relatively large sticks in here as well that helps with the aeration of the compost because this form of composting is is aerobic composting meaning with oxygen so we want to have some oxygen in there I like to add other things to this compost pile like you may have seen last year I added some and I did this year as well but in the video last year I showed you how added some eggshells and also some ash when it comes to adding ash though to the compost pile you want to make sure you're not adding too much because ash is alkaline if your compost pile is too alkaline meaning the pH is is too high then what that's going to do is actually deter some of those microbes and organisms from thriving so we're gonna keep adding like this we're gonna just gonna put some more coffee grounds in there and like I said I already added a good amount of coffee grounds but I'd like to just add them at different times if you're not a coffee drinker yourself then you can just go to a local place and ask them to save some of their coffee grounds usually at the end of the day they're just throwing them out so it'd be a good idea earlier in the day or the day before call them ask them if they can save all the coffee grounds for you and then you could bring them home and process them in the compost pile I suggest like this I think this is really the best and most effective way to do it in a compost pile since the coffee grounds have a high level of nitrogen they're considered a green material so if you're adding a lot of coffee grounds you want to make sure you're balancing that green with some Brown maybe some hay or some other Brown material but ours is already cooking up nicely so we're gonna move this over in this compost pile to have a lot of tomatoes a lot of different stuff but you can see it's still cooking up really nicely which we'd love to see and when it comes to a compost pile it's only gonna cook if it's at least I think about three feet high three feet wide you have to have some of that compression it also needs to be nice and wet so we're just gonna continue to what we're doing everything in layers adding more coffee I have a couple more buckets of coffee grounds adding more coffee grounds and then making sure we're watering that in one thing I have read that even though coffee grounds can possibly some people say acidify your soil which I don't really believe it does but if it does you don't want to add it to things like tomato plants even though tomatoes are plants that like a more acidic soil this coffee will actually deter some of the tomato plants of what I read it from a number of sources so that's not something that I'm going to be adding ever as a mulch around my Tomatoes but that's again why I love composting it because we're getting the full use of it and we're making it nice and safe for the garden we're not worried about any caffeine because it's gonna just dissipate that the levels of it so this is I think the safest the best and most effective way to make sure you're getting this good use of this natural resource that I'm sure is just in abundance basically wherever you live I'm over here mixing the compost pile tucks trying to climb up the fence thing to grab some of the cucumbers look at him this guy this is how much he likes them to show you that I'm not picking these cucumbers for him he goes and grabs him himself he loves being out here and that's why I mentioned before I can't just constantly happen in the garden because I mean he's a sweet guy he's a good buy but when it comes to cucumbers and carrots he tends to be a little bit of a greedy guy although he's a good boy throw some hearts down in the comments if you if you love talk if you love seeing him in the garden and you love how he just craves the natural food when you grow yourself I mean I mentioned it before but it's nothing like the stuff you get in the store sometimes Chuck doesn't like some of the stuff in the store but when it comes to things from the garden I think he loves it as much as he just loves eating it because it's fun for him like it's almost like a toy that he gets a snack on and actually eat if you don't have a compost pile like I have here you can also add your coffee grounds to your vermicompost because those worms will appreciate it and they'll process that coffee for you [Music] asked you not to keep me waiting I told you not to keep me waiting now the afternoon is waiting [Music] add a few more scoops up top here sometimes it's nice to just keep a hole in the center this way you can stick your hose in there and just water it in nicely get this last part watered your compost is really any decrease in size over time because it's cooking up a lot of it's breaking it down so we got a little plastic right there so make sure we got it warded thoroughly and then cover it back up at the top using coffee grounds in the garden reminds me of the idea that things can either be good or bad beneficial or not depending upon how we use them it's like watering watering is great for the garden but too much of it and you could drown your plants coffee grounds can be great as a fertilizer but mix them into your soil and mix too much of it into your soil then you can actually deter the plants from growing which is something we definitely don't want and when it comes down to it as gardeners one of our best assets our information and education because the more we know the more we can grow you guys are enjoying the video hit the like button hit the subscribe button share with your friends and don't forget to check the merch of download it's got the tarp on the compost pile I'll put some bricks around it it'll start cooking up and in a few days I'll mix it again that's the video though thanks for watching I hope you enjoyed it I hope you got something out of it and I hope you know that in conclusion that coffee grounds can be a great fertilizer it depended upon how you use them in your garden if you enjoyed the video hit the like button hit the subscribe button share with your friends talking James will be back Tarrou soon showing you how the gardens are doing we you [Music]

Channel: The Gardening Channel With James Prigioni

Views: 494,954

Keywords: garden, gardening, coffee in garden, organic gardening, using coffee in garden, organic garden, compost, composting, coffee grounds, what happens, self sufficient me, OYR, oneyardrevolution, farming, vegetable garden, migardener, james prigioni

Id: 4aJ37Lp2mFk

Length: 10min 2sec (602 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 01 2019