“A cup of coffee – real coffee – home-browned, home ground, home made, that comes to you dark as a hazel-eye, but changes to a golden bronze as you temper it with cream that never cheated, but was real cream from its birth, thick, tenderly yellow, perfectly sweet, neither lumpy nor frothing on the Java: such a cup of coffee is a match for twenty blue devils and will exorcise them all.” — Henry Ward Beecher

Coffee GroundsWe like coffee in our house and enjoy plenty of it. Most weekday mornings at approximately 4:50 AM, you’ll find me emptying the moist grounds from the day before into the trash container. Over the course of a year, I’m convinced that I’ve disposed of at least one or perhaps even two curbside trash bins full of coffee grounds. That’s a lot of grounds being trucked off to the landfill.

Here’s my penny-wise tip of the week worthy of Dawn’s stamp of frugal approval. Did you know that coffee is good for plants? This is what I love about Southern California… I’m reading the current issue of Southern California Home and Outdoor, compliments of my neighborhood car wash, and I find gardening tips in November. Martha Stewart is already basting the turkey and making corn stalk decoration with readers in the rest of North America, but only in Southern California can you eke out 52 green thumb weekend experiences… which is why this article caught my interest.

Cay Smith writes, “You’ve probably heard this before, and if you don’t believe it, think again: Coffee is good for plants. In fact coffee grounds make an excellent mulch component.”

“Sprinkling coffee grounds around your plants before you water or just before it rains can produce a slow-releasing nitrogen that is healthy for your garden. You can also dilute coffee to produce a mild, fast-acting fertilizer.”

“To get coffee ground in large quantities, visit a Starbucks store and get them for free. By the way, if your local Starbucks does not offer coffee grounds, ask to have a ‘Green Team’ member start the program for your neighborhood.”

Sustainable Enterprises offer these tips: “Every day across America, Asia and Europe, millions of pots of coffee and tea are brewed, and the millions of pounds of wet grounds, filters and bags thrown in the trash. This is both wasteful and foolish.” Click on this link to also view some helpful reader comments.

“Coffee by-products can be used in the garden and farm as follows:

  • Sprinkle used grounds around plants before rain or watering, for a slow-release nitrogen.
  • Add to compost piles to increase nitrogen balance. Coffee filters and tea bags break down rapidly during composting.
  • Dilute with water for a gentle, fast-acting liquid fertilizer. Use about a half-pound can of wet grounds in a five-gallon bucket of water; let sit outdoors to achieve ambient temperature.
  • Mix into soil for houseplants or new vegetable beds.
  • Encircle the base of the plant with a coffee and eggshell barrier to repel pests.
  • If you are into vermi-posting, feed a little bit to your worms.”

Starbucks and plants equal urban gardening! And you get to save a few bucks on fertilizer.