Can you use Coffee as an Organic Fertilizer and will it Change the pH of your Soil
Can you use cold coffee to fertilize and lower the pH of the soil around your blueberries? Last week we discussed the benefits and how to use spent coffee grounds in the garden. Today I though we could see if cold coffee can be of use in the garden. Lab Results: http://www.albertaurbangarden.ca/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/150208_AlbertaUrbanGardenCertificateofAnalysis-RevistedReport.pdf If your like me Sunday afternoon after brewing a pot of organic coffee at home and often have some left over. Can your garden get some benefit from the cold black coffee like it does from spent grounds? There are two benefits people commonly use cold coffee for. The first is as a weak organic fertilizer and the second is to help adjust the pH around acid loving plants like blueberries. In order to test this we sent samples kindly provided to us by Starbucks to Maxxam Analytical for analysis. We had both espresso and coffee tested for the available NPK, trace elements and finally the pH Based on these results coffee has an NPK of 0.000848 -- 0.0099 -- 0.0976 while espresso has an NPK of 0.00806 -- 0.0665 -- 0.8433 These represent the immediately available NPK. Other than the Potassium in the espresso these are relatively low numbers. You will get more nutrients if you use compost or mulches made up of coffee grounds and comfrey with fall leaves or wood chips. Both coffee and espresso do have low levels of trace elements that are are essential and beneficial to plant growth including Boron, Calcium, Copper, Magnesium, Manganese and Sulphur. In summary the NPK and trace elements are in very low concentrations so can you use coffee to lower the pH of soil? pH is a scale where 7 denotes a neutral like pure water 14 is very basic and 0 is extremely acidic. Some plants like blueberries, roses, and grapes enjoy soil that has a pH range of 4.5 -6.5. The reported pH of the coffee was 5.10 and the espresso has a reported pH of 5.31. Coffee can have a range of pH including some sources reporting lower pH. however the average cup of coffee has a pH similar to our results. Similarly unpolluted rain water often has a pH of around 5.0 to 5.5. As the water moves through the air it absorbs carbon dioxide creating carbonic acid. With all the rain over thousands of years one would assume most soils would have a pH around 5.0? Well no soils have a buffering capacity that neutralizes these the weak acid in rain water fairly quickly. With a pH of 5.10 cold coffee has very weak acids in it. Most soils especially if they have clay content have enough buffering capacity to quickly neutralize the acids in cold coffee. Coffee is essentially an hot water extract and the acidic compounds found in it are high water solubility. If the weak acids are not neutralization right away they will likely move away from the area you wish to influence as water moves through the soil. Based on these results using cold coffee in your garden likely has limited benefits. Any changes to the pH of your soil will be limited and will not persist long enough to be of benefit to acid loving plants. Cold coffee also only adds small amount of NPK and trace elements. Related Videos: Do Coffee Grounds Acidify Soil? http://youtu.be/ifEAqN1bMNU Do Pine Needles Acidity Soil? http://youtu.be/_B8-1sVcfzE References: Acid loving plants: http://pss.uvm.edu/ppp/pubs/oh34.htm Essential and Beneficial Elements: http://soils.wisc.edu/facstaff/barak/soilscience326/listofel.htm Acid Rain: http://www.elmhurst.edu/~chm/vchembook/196soil.html Acids General Information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid Lowering the pH using Sulfur http://blueberries.msu.edu/uploads/files/Lowering_Soil_pH_with_Sulfur.pdf Understanding how to adjust soil pH http://www.gardenmyths.com/increasing-soil-acidity/
Comments
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Moral of the story is drink all of your coffee and put the grounds in your compost pile!
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anyway the cofee on the soil it's good to encrease the texture qualities and organic material for the warms
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Good detailed explanation. Agree with the analysis. But instead of flushing it down the sink, might as well still use it in the garden.
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so bottom line!!!! cold coffee is NOT good? only the grounds after brewing shud be used...if I understand correctly.
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Can you please reply? I have watched a couple of your vids about rock dust and compost. Can you please tell me if sand and rock dust is the same thing? It seems to me the are.
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Very informative video, thanks!
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Information !! Thank you !
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I left some coffee powder in a small bucket with water, I left the coffee sink in for half a day.
After that I took it and watered my 2 bilberry plants.
Now I can't be certain it's because of that (timing though) but my one big container of blueberry shoot like mad, tons of leaves and flower buds everywhere!
My smaller container with a smaller plant of bilberry (which I though was stunted, they were planted at the same time after all) didn't grow as much tall wise but the roots went crazy, the bottom of the container was full packed with roots, after I replanted it it went big too.
So my experience with coffee was a big success with Bilberry. -
Are you concerned that because inorganic coffee is so heavily sprayed with pesticides that some of those toxins from those coffee grounds could be leaching into the soil?
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Feed the soil. People tend to always think about feeding the plants directly with water soluble nutrients, however the key is to feed the SOIL (billions of microorganisms are involved in the soil, and they do the work). If you feed the soil (and those microorganisms living in it) they will feed the plants. Feed coffee grounds to worms, along with plenty of chitin base as well as cellulose base material, and the resulting castings will feed the SOIL for you. Left over coffee is not soil food. It is only colored water. Treat it as water...
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Stephan good info. When I first started growing blueberries I would water them with a watercan that I squeezed lemons into. It was a never-ending process... Sulfur works much better. I've added sulfur once in the last year. :)
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Heya Stephen
The (trace) minerals might reside in the water the coffee is brewed with ?
Just wondering if you had the water checked out too ;o)
Cheers ! -
Am glad I didn't take anyone's advice & only drink it ;-)
Cheers mate.. -
I always wondered about using coffee...now I know ! Thanks :) And looking forward to your comfrey episode next time !
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Coffee to change ph of soil? Hmmm?
Another excellent analysis, Stephen. Thanks for sharing.
I wonder if the "Acid Rain" fears of the 70's lost steam because of soils buffering abilities? -
What about water from a fish tank?
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Good to know that I really shouldn't need to brew an extra pot of coffee. The first one gets destroyed by my wife,and I ; )
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Is using Coffee as an organic fertilizer or to lower the pH a garden Fact or Myth ? Well let's investigate in today's video !
#coldcoffee #coffee #starbucks #organic #fertilizer #organicfertilizer #pH #lowerph #acidity #acid #acidic #blueberries
https://youtu.be/LOIc5VzCMeY -
Fantastic information Stephen! Thanks for the effort for the video and I learnt a lot from it :)
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Very interesting results, thank you. I can`t wait for the Comfrey episode.
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