Property News · October 23, 2016

Gardens: so you think coffee grounds are good for plants


A real-life test and all the science explodes this popular mythIt’s one of the most common gardening tips going: apply spent coffee grounds around your garden for amazing results. A quick internet search for “coffee grounds + plants” will draw up close to four million hits, with consistent claims they can add essential minerals to the soil, boost populations of friendly soil bacteria and even reduce the pH of growing media for acid-loving plants like rhododendrons. In fact, on a trip to an achingly eco organic coffee shop in San Francisco last year I saw big barrels of used coffee grounds with scoops and brown bags, free to customers to collect, under a sign detailing their many horticultural virtues. What a great idea!Always keen to try out a quirky horticultural tip, and being a bit of a caffeine fiend, I decided to put the theory to the test this summer on two identical vegetable beds containing a mix of tomatoes, lettuce, herbs and flowers. Now, this was hardly a rigorous scientific trial, just a rough-and-ready experiment to satisfy passing curiosity. I’d just dump my daily coffee grounds on the surface as a mulch once they had cooled (the way books and blogs suggest), creating a beautiful dark inch-thick layer of coffee compost by the end of the summer. Continue reading…

Source : theguardian.com
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