Can Coffee Grounds be Composted?

Can Coffee Grounds be Composted? Here’s How Your Brew can Help Grow some Amazing Vegetables this Spring!

We’re finally, and ever so slowly, emerging out of hibernation mode from this snowy or (how we have it here in Vancouver) rainy and cold winter. Warmer days are so close – you can almost taste the sip of coffee you take on your patio in the morning while the sun shines brightly over your garden and someone’s lawnmower is running in overdrive on the brink of another neighbour’s Saturday morning being ruined.

It’s funny to think that the cup of coffee you enjoyed in your garden can actually be a great addition to helping your garden flourish too.

Coffee: Delicious for you AND for your plants

You might be thinking: Are coffee grounds good for the soil? But you’re not the only one who loves that single-origin brew – turning your coffee grounds into fertilizer can really benefit your plants too!

When you mix in coffee grounds with the rest of your compost such as leaves, food scraps and other households green waste, coffee adds nitrogen to your compost, benefitting your plants.

Adding your grounds directly to plants and vegetables growing in your garden may not be the best thing for all of them as coffee, especially washed coffee, tends to be very acidic. This is resolved when mixing with other compost OR when you add coffee grounds directly to acid-loving plants like lilies, hydrangeas, or root vegetables like radishes, beets, or potatoes who tend to favour the more acidic soil. It’s also been said that coffee grounds and acidic soil tend to fend off slugs and snails and keep weeds away from invading your garden.

How to Compost Your Coffee Grounds:

Composting your coffee grounds doesn’t need to be a huge chore or laborious task – you can set up a system in a few easy steps.

Set aside a container to collect your coffee grounds, whether that be from your Hario V60 Pourover or from you Bodum French Press.
Empty your coffee grounds in this container after you brew.
At the end of each day, either add your grounds to your general compost bin OR spread on patches of dirt where your acid-loving plants reside.
Sit back and watch your plants grow!

The wonders of what coffee can do! What coffee hacks do you have up your sleeve?