From the moment coffea arabica seeds are sown into the soil, they go through a beautiful journey. But once they turn to brewed coffee in your cup, this journey receives a somewhat bittersweet end. Once used, coffee grounds typically go into trash. That can and should change. Using coffee grounds are a great way to give your plants some much needed nutrition in an easy, cost-effective way.
This World Environment Day, that’s what we wanted to highlight in this blog – the beautiful process of repurposing coffee grounds as fertilizer to nurture the very soil that they come from!
Coffee Grounds as a Fertilizer
When repurposed as a fertilizer, used coffee grounds:
- enable aeration,
- add organic material to the soil,
- improve drainage and water retention, and
- provide nutrients for plant growth by helping microorganisms thrive.
All you have to do is sprinkle them onto the soil surrounding a plant every few days.
Coffee grounds as Compost
There are two types of compost material: green and brown. Interestingly, your coffee grounds that look brown are actually green compost material. They provide organic matter that earthworms can easily digest. As earthworms consume organic matter, they help accelerate its decomposition, leading to the release of nutrients, including nitrogen, in a more plant-available form.
The only caveat is that green compost material, like coffee grounds, needs to be mixed with brown compost material. That’s because if you have too much green material, your compost pile will heat up and start to smell, and if you don’t have enough, the pile won’t heat up at all.
Understanding Brown and Green Compost Material
Green materials are those that are rich in nitrogen. These tend to heat the compost pile and allow microorganisms to multiply quickly. Some examples of green material are grass clippings, vegetable and fruit scraps, eggshells and animal manure.
Brown materials are carbohydrate-rich. Their main job is to be a food source for all the microorganisms and help allow air to filter through the pile. Some examples of brown material are fallen leaves, twigs, straw or hay, and paper (from newspapers, printing paper, paper plates and napkins, coffee filters etc.).
Both green and brown compost material must be used together in a 4:1 ratio.
Need Our Help Getting Used Coffee Grounds?
We’re happy to tell you that select Blue Tokai cafés have coffee repurposing stations from where you can take as much used coffee grounds as you’d like! If you wish to get more information about these repurposing stations or understand how to collect used coffee for home, be sure to ask our baristas!
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