Why You Need To Cover Your Lawn In Coffee Grounds This Summer

While you should never wash coffee grounds down the drain, it's not necessarily a bad thing to have excess grounds in your house. In fact, there are plenty of ways you can squeeze some use out of the dregs of your morning coffee pot. If you have a yard, or even if you just care for plants inside of your home, you can repurpose your coffee grounds into a great addition to the soil just by sprinkling them through the dirt. You want to use a thin layer, because coffee grounds tend to pack tightly and won't let water or nutrients through to your plants. If possible, compost your grounds before using them, too, and be sure to mix in plenty of other compost-safe materials like leaves, lawn clippings, old veggies, and more. This ensures you don't have a mixture that leans too heavily in favor of the coffee grounds.

We have a list of 8 ways to use those old coffee grounds in your garden, and just at a glance, you'll be able to tell that coffee grounds have many different purposes when it comes to your beloved greenery. First, you can use coffee grounds as a natural form of pest control. Though results can vary, they have reported use against cats, foxes, slugs, and other types of insects, who don't care for the strong scent, gritty texture, or even the caffeine. Coffee grounds are also good as a mulch or slow-release fertilizer, since they often contain elements like phosphorus, potassium, and nitrogen, which are also fantastic for encouraging the grass in your lawn to grow. 

Of course, much like people themselves, not all plants do well with coffee grounds, while others flourish. Since coffee grounds are pretty acidic, you want to stick with using them on plants that love some acid and can tolerate the accompanying dash of caffeine. Besides the grass in your lawn, this includes edible plants like radishes, carrots, and blueberries, along with different flowering plants like hydrangeas and azaleas. Plants that need tons of nutrients, like rose bushes, may also benefit from a nice, light-handed sprinkle of the stuff. Just remember not to go too ham and overload your dirt.

As for plants that won't appreciate a good dose of coffee grounds in the morning, swerve from tomatoes and seedlings, which can have their growth stunted by the caffeine that remains in your grounds. Other flowering plants like rhododendrons may not do well for similar reasons. If you only have seedling areas, that's fine; there are plenty of other clever ways to make use of leftover coffee grounds that don't involve your garden, so you'll have options while waiting for your seeds to germinate. Go and brew yourself that morning cup of joe and rest well knowing that no matter what, the grounds will go somewhere better than the trash.