Skip to main content
Coffee Tips

Benefits of Coffee Grounds for Your Home & Garden

Coffee is among the most popular beverages in the world. Most people discard the coffee grounds left behind after brewing coffee. However, coffee grounds have a lot of practical uses for your home and garden. They include:

  • Fertilizing your garden
  • For compost use
  • Repelling insects and pests
  • Removing fleas from pets
  • Growing mushrooms

girl using coffee grounds in garden

The use of coffee grounds in the garden poses a great concern for people who raise chickens – can chickens eat coffee grounds? Let’s find out.

Coffees Origin

Coffees’ origin traces back to the ancient coffee forests in the Ethiopian plateau. According to history, coffee was first discovered by an Ethiopian goat-herder Kaldi, who was roaming the Ethiopian kingdom countryside with his goats. The herder noticed that his goats behaved erratically as they ate the fruits of a mid-sized, dark green shrubbery with red berries. As a result of his curiosity, he took some of the berries with him and shared his findings with a monk. The monk made a drink out of the berries, which kept him and other monks alert during their evening prayers.

A word regarding coffee moved to the east and reached the Arabian Peninsula, and that’s how coffee’s popularity around the globe began. There are two types of coffee beans – the Arabica and Robusta. Each of these coffee beans has its flavor notes and caffeine content. For example, Arabica has sweet and fruity flavors, while Robusta has earthy and bitter flavors. Also, Robusta has double the caffeine in Arabica.

Coffee consumption is linked to many health benefits such as boosting energy levels, lowering the risk of some chronic diseases, lowering depression risk, supporting brain health, and promoting weight loss, among others. And some of these benefits are the reasons why millions of people consume coffee around the world.

The coffee brewing process involves the roasting of coffee beans, grinding the coffee beans, mixing the grounded coffee with hot water for a specific period, and finally separating the coffee from the used coffee grounds. This article will discuss the basic details of coffee grounds, the benefits of these grounds, the effects of coffee grounds on chickens, and everything else you need to know regarding coffee grounds and chickens. Let’s begin.

What are Coffee Grounds?

Used coffee grounds are the leftovers of the brewing process. As mentioned earlier, the final brewing step is separating the coffee from the used coffee grounds. Coffee grounds vary in size and shape depending on the type of beans used and their grinding process. Coffee grounds often look like grains, needles, or beans.

A lot of people and coffee shops regard used coffee grounds as waste. And most of these people usually throw them away. However, there are several benefits of used coffee grounds – you can use them for your home and garden. Let’s discuss the benefits of used coffee grounds in detail.

Benefits of Coffee Grounds for Your Garden

Used coffee grounds will make your garden better in several ways. These are:

  •  To Fertilize Your Garden

Most soils in our gardens lack the essential nutrients required for optimal plant growth. Also, as plants grow, they absorb the nutrients in the soil, leaving it depleted. For this reason, most gardens require fertilizer to ensure that the soil has enough nutrients needed for the plant’s survival and growth.

Used coffee grounds contain minerals such as nitrogen, potassium, magnesium, calcium, iron, phosphorus, and chromium that are required for plant growth. Coffee grounds may also help absorb heavy metals present in the soil that can contaminate it. What’s more, coffee grounds may help attract worms that are essential nutrients for your garden.

  •   Compost

You can compost your coffee grounds for later use in your garden. Composting involves turning organic materials such as food scraps into a dark and rich material known as compost or humus. When you add compost to your garden, it helps hold onto water and nutrients in the soil, which improves your plant’s health. Studies indicate that compost made with coffee grounds and other kitchen waste is richer in nutrients than that made of waste alone. Additionally, coffee grounds help decrease the greenhouse gas emissions in composts.

  •   Repel Insects and Pests

You can use coffee grounds to repel insects and pests. This is a result of the caffeine and terpenes in coffee grounds that are highly toxic to insects and pests. Used coffee grounds are effective in deterring insects such as bugs, mosquitoes, beetles, and flees, that may damage your crops. Additionally, when you scatter coffee grounds around your plants, they create a barrier that snails and slugs don’t like to crawl over.

  •   Grow Mushrooms

Mushrooms are among the difficult plants to grow since they only thrive under certain conditions. For starters, mushrooms don’t grow in ordinary garden soil, since they require an underlying substance, substrate, or layer. Used coffee grounds can be used as a great substrate since they’re full of nutrients that are essential for mushroom growth. Additionally, coffee grounds have been sterilized as a result of the brewing process, thus suitable for mushroom growth. Generally, when coffee grounds are combined with adequate moisture, they serve as an ideal environment for growing mushrooms.

  •   Boosting Some Plants

Coffee grounds raise the acidity of the soil and are therefore essential for acidic-loving plants such as blueberries, azaleas, carrots, radishes, and lilies.

Generally, coffee grounds are an excellent material for gardening.