Coffee for plants? Oh yeah!

I don't see any need to run tests. The results are conclusive. Coffee has what plants need to grow. Think about it, all the beans are, are the cotyledon of baby coffee bushes/trees. The beans are baked so the nutrients breakdown and become soluble; then we leach a lot of this good nutrient out of the beans when making the coffee drink. After sitting on the burner for too long, the drink starts to oxidize and taste horrible, but the all nutrients are still there, just not the flavor/anti-oxidents.

Hello R,

Below is a reply from another forum where I posted the same thread. I am using a strong brew of Maxwell House, but I really doubt the brand matters any. Nothing was adding, sugar in the soil sounds like a very bad idea to me. It is just old, burnt coffee people would normally poor down the drain and make a new pot full.

Side effects to watch for include an increase the pathogens and weeds. It works like fertilizer on everything, not just the CP's. For example, if you have some mold growing on the soil surface, this will also make it grow much thicker and faster. Same for Algae.

The difference between this and salt based fertilizer is coffee appears to a perfectly balanced level of nutrients for the growth of most Carnivorous Plants, whereas salt based fertile have to be carefully applied, under applied really, and they can still harm your plants. The coffee does not seem to have this sort of problem.


Dear Michelle and Trent,

No, I think it is the nutrients from the coffee beans. I do think it has a soil refreshing quality, like with peat tea. However, I think that coffee is much more potent than peat tea. People mention that peat tea re-acidifies soil, I doubt it. Peat moss has nutrients, but they are bound by the acidic conditions, adding peat tea replaces some of the nutrients, but they are still bound by the tannic acids and there really isn't a good "spectrum" of nutrient in peat tea; too much of one thing and none of another. Coffee simply has way more nutrient than does a similar amount of peat moss, which is mostly fiber.

Hello,

I think the real news in this thread is that Dave admitted to the world that he grows "Pothos"! ;D
Sorry Dave, I couldn't help myself. Epipremnum aureum "Pothos" is a common exotic here in Florida, climbing high into trees in people's yards.

Take care,
Steve

Brian,

I only know about the C:N ratio of coffee grounds because, as a new homeowner, I recently set up a compost bin in the back yard. I've got plenty of nitrogen for it from the lawn clippings (the lawn must go!), but have had a devil of a time finding carbon rich matter for the pile. No deciduous trees!

Neighbors have spotted me collecting dead brown grasses and weeds from a weedy lot nearby!

Anyway, I stopped by a Starbucks and picked up a garbage can's worth of coffee grounds---figuring they'd be "browns" for the pile. But a bit of research turns up that coffee grounds are extremely nitrogen rich! Crazy.

So, I wonder if Dave's coffee experiments are acting as a mild fertilizer?

B

In the world of compost, spent coffee grounds are classified as a green. Ideally, one would want equal parts of greens and browns in their compost.

Browns are sources of carbon and they don't decompose all that fast. Examples of browns would be the straw from horse stalls, sawdust from a chainsaw, ashes, pine needles, leaves, stale bread, toilet paper and paper towel tubes, and spent potting soils. Greens are sources of nitrogen and they decompose faster. Examples of greens would be horse manure, dog poops (yes, I add those to my composter because my dogs are all on Frontline Plus and vetted at least once a year), chicken poop, coffee grounds, tea bags, vegetable and fruit scraps, pond string algae, house plants on their way to heaven, shrub prunings, and of course grass clippings.

Egg shells are supposedly a brown but they also add calcium as well as other micronutrients to our compost.

I shamelessly stand in line at Starbucks with all the coffee drinkers waiting my turn to get my "freebies" while they pay. I pick up over 90% of my spent coffee grounds from Starbucks because we simply don't drink coffee all that much at home. Starbucks packages it nicely and I simply toss it into my composter. Here's what their label on their spent coffee grounds says-



Although I'm not advocating the use of spent coffee grounds around anyone's CPs, I have been treating some of my Nepenthes to left over Maxwell House Medium Dark coffee for a while and have experienced that same darker green mentioned by Dave Evans. I admittedly seem to get similar results when adding 1T of vinegar to rain water also so I suspect the Neps are benefiting from the acid being added to their medium somehow. Average pH of Maxwell House's Medium Dark coffee grounds is stated as not being slightly acidic but acidic at 4.0. I've tested their coffee myself using a truncheon meter and am coming up with similar readings. I suspect the average pH for Folger's Medium Dark Blend would be somewhere in that range and interestingly enough, the longer the coffee sits around in a cup, the lower the pH. Somebody explain this please.

That being said, I don't think I'd treat a Nep to a monthly drink of decaffeinated coffee as the chemicals frequently used in the decaffeination process aren't exactly fully disclosed.

Has anyone tried coffee on Sarracenia? If yes, what were the rsults?