watering with coffee???

I read a lot about using left over coffee ground and tea bags.
What about left over cold coffee. Nothing added like cream or sugar.
How bad cold that be?
Would it be a long the same lines as coffee and tea grounds?

Wonder if the coffee would color the plant too?

I don't know of any benefit the coffee would have, and I'm not sure if the caffeine would be good for the plant. The coffee grounds are good because they're organic material that'll break down and enrich the soil so you wouldn't get that benefit from just the coffee. (the caffeine is pretty well leached out of the grounds by the coffee brewing process).

My Dad use to dump the left over coffee into the office potted plant and that thing grew like something out of the Little Shop of Horrors. The coffee may not have helped, but it certainly didn't hurt it.

Mike McGrath, of "You Bet Your Garden" fame, extols the virtues of coffee grounds. He says they are extremely nitrogen rich, and hands-down, the best ingredient in your kitchen scraps for the garden. He even advocates visiting your local coffee shop to get all their used coffee grounds for your compost pile. I always pour any unused coffee in my compost can in the mornings, as well as the spent grounds.

I just recently did a little research along these lines also. Coffee grounds are good for getting rid of slugs - the caffeine can kill them with enough exposure. It will also deter them if used as a mulch around the plant. The grounds are pretty much nitrogen so any nitro loving plant will appreciate them. They can turn the soil to the acidic side so overuse is not recommended. Given the concentrations of nitrogen they're great for azaleas, rhodies, laurel and the like. Cold "liquid" coffee can be used just like water with nitrogen fertilizer although you might want to cut it with a little water to dilute the mix a little. It shouldn't burn anything but just to be safe....
Starbucks gives them away on a first come, first served basis. Local convenience stores can be another good source of spent grounds. when using in a compost heap you can put filter and all in there.
I recently put down a 1/4" layer on a few tomatoes and some cucumber plants and within a few days saw a marked flush of growth and a nice dark green glow!
I actually read about a lady who got enough burned, un-ground beans to build a garden path. It sounded really cool.

edit: Someone said they can turn blue hydrangeas pink. I guess they're the litmus paper of the plant world.

This message was edited Jun 6, 2010 11:07 PM

I thought it took lime to turn blue hydranias pink. How do you turn them purple?

If your soil pH is around neutral sometimes you can get a purplish color in your hydrangeas--it's when the flowers are in that transition point between being pink and being blue.

Although there's a lot of info out there saying otherwise, coffee grounds are not really effective for changing soil pH--most of the acidity is removed in the brewing process. But if they did have an effect it would be acidifying the soil and making pink hydrangeas go to blue. The coffee on the other hand would be acidic--I'm not sure how much of it you'd need to use to turn pink hydrangeas blue but it could move the soil pH in that direction if you used enough (but there are probably better methods of acidifying your soil if that's what you want to do)

Books-A-Million saves their coffee grounds too for guest. The store by me bags them up and has them in a tin in the cafe. They're free to whoever would like them.

it does take lime to turn them pink. acid in the soil does turn them blue as will coffee grounds.

I have long used the coffee grounds to enhance my soil. Especially around my acid loving plants, tomatoes, etc. I live in a patio home and my patio was nothing but clay when I moved in five years ago. I have worked on it each year and now have it in perfect condition. I added sphagnum peat each year and always used my coffee grounds. I know of no harm or benefit for the pure left over coffee but do know the grounds add, for lack of a better word, fiber to the ground. Makes it loose and great to grow anything in. I am attaching a picture of my tomatoes this year. Great huh?t

OK - I plead dyslexia! But I did recently start a thread about using coffee grounds as mulch,and of course I can't find it now, and I swear that's what I remember....but again - Lexdysia! :-)

edit: http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1098789/

edit to edit: not trying to call anybody out or anything, just trying to make sure I read right!

This message was edited Jun 7, 2010 3:12 PM

This message was edited Jun 7, 2010 3:14 PM

The person who responded in your other thread has the pink/blue thing backwards. So you read their post correctly, but they were either misinformed or remembered it wrong. Acid soil makes hydrangeas blue, alkaline soil makes them pink. Coffee grounds won't have much of an effect on your soil pH because most of the acidity is removed in the brewing process, but if it had any effect at all it would be to lower the pH slightly which would move you toward the acidic/blue range.

Well I found this very helpful!
I mixed up my own potting soil with coffee grounds and other stuff. I transplanted my herbs in it.
I can't believe how fast they are growing!
Even the boxwood basil that broke off of another plant!
I didn't root in water.
I just planted it in the same mix I used for all the other herbs and it is growing wonderfully!
Thank you everyone!

This thread actually helped me to see something also - I was just bring my grounds home and spreading them through the gardens or chunking them in the compost pile and was content with that. well since they come through a convenience store they're always in plastic bags - I know, that's bad enough already, but we deal with those, at any rate...they come in the plastic bags and a lot of the wet grounds are stuck to the inside of the bag. well I tried shaking them out only to find myself covered with spent grounds. Which is cool - I've been covered with much worse! I then thought about "watering with coffee" and took the "empty" bags to the rain barrels and sank them in the water. I then managed to turn the bag inside out while it was in the barrel releasing all the mini-grounds trapped inside. the bags come out nearly as clean as a whistle! I know we're talking about the tracest of trace amounts but I feel like I'm getting all I can from my free grounds.
I'm sure I've mentioned in posts before how utterly cheap I am. Let this be a lesson!
Happy Gardening mezoe!

Found this link on the way to change the color on Hydrangea, I always heard lime for blue and peat moss for pink. This says lime for blue. http://www.hydrangeashydrangeas.com/colorchange.html

Where in there did you see them saying lime for blue? When I read it, I saw lime for pink and aluminum sulfate for blue (which by the way is correct...lime raises the pH and high/alkaline pH gives you pink flowers; aluminum sulfate or peat will lower the pH and low/acidic pH gives you blue)

Sorry Ecrane3, getting my links crossed, but did read that somewhere and have been putting lime on mine. Won't do that again. This one said this about lime Planting hydrangeas near a concrete foundation or sidewalk will often affect the color since the pH of the soil may be raised considerably by lime leaching out of these structures, making it difficult to obtain blue.

You are the expert, just found the link and thought it would help.:-)

Hi there,

I was trying to grow Gardenias in Texas, and i read that you should water them once a week with diluted coffee to acidify the soil. I guess it is a good idea if your soil is too alkaline.

Hi max100, the lime didn't hurt mine as you can see lol

flowers, you little rascal, everywhere I turn you have a picture up of your beautiful hydranias. You have a right to be proud of them. Mine have gone caput. For some reason mine didn't maintain there pretty blue color very long. For the past two weeks I have had to water them, just to keep them a live in this drough and heat we are having. One thing a hydrania can't stand is dry. There name means water pot.

Hang on to those two propane bottles, you can't find that size anymore. I looked all last year for one to use in my green house.