Many people start their day with a cup of delicious, hot coffee. In addition to its positive effects on the human body, coffee can also be useful for other reasons.

You can enjoy the benefits of coffee even after you have finished drinking your cup of refreshing coffee. Read on to find out how you can use the coffee grounds left over after brewing coffee for gardening purposes.

How to use coffee grounds in the garden?

1. Pest repellent

For gardeners, there is nothing worse than having pesky pests ruin their well-maintained garden. From now on, you don’t have to worry, because here is a simple solution to the problem. Scatter some coffee grounds around the base of your garden plants, and you’ll get rid of rowdy ants, slugs and snails. If you also mix pieces of dried orange peel into the coffee grounds, it will even discourage cats from scratching small holes in the beds.

2. Plant nutrient

If you want your hydrangea, camellia, azalea, rhododendron, rose or other acid-loving plants to grow healthily, use coffee grounds. Mix it with dried grass clippings, dry leaves or straw to slightly shift the pH value around the plants towards neutral. If you sprinkle coffee grounds at the base of the plants, you will enrich the soil with nitrogen and potassium, as well as magnesium, which all plants need for proper growth.

However, you should keep in mind that this method of nutrient supply does not provide enough phosphorus and calcium, so it is not particularly favorable for flowering and fruit yield. Therefore, you need to add a little lime or ash to the coffee grounds in order to get an all-purpose plant nutrient as a result.

3. For composting

If you do not use the coffee grounds immediately as above, take them to the compost pile. Coffee grounds are beneficial for compost, as they are very rich in nitrogen. Not to mention that coffee grounds mixed into the compost speed up the composting process.

Caution: be careful not to use too much freshly brewed coffee grounds in the garden at once. It takes some time for the coffee grounds to decompose, after which you can safely work with it.

4. For growing carrots

If you love carrots and want to grow a lot of them in your garden, here’s what you can do to make this popular root vegetable grow as beautifully as possible. Before you sow the carrot seeds, mix them with some old, dried coffee grounds. In this way, you can say that you gave the carrot a big push to develop right from the start.