mmmmmm coffee

I finally got a hold of two big bags of used coffee grounds. My local cafe doesn't give them out because the people who work there take them home for their own gardens! But I was in the city and Starbucks had a sign inviting people to ask for them, so I did. Though I must say that on a hot day, carrying 2 bags of wet coffee grinds, about 6 or 7 kilos each, to the car ... was not fun.

It's such beautiful mulch. You can put it straight into the compost but I want to use it directly as much as I can. I put some on almost all of my pot plants, under the straw mulch, then put a bunch on my Japanese maple, pumpkin and carrots. And that was only half of the grounds! I just hope that it doesn't make the carrots taste like coffee...

I checked and the pH is 5, very acidic (makes sense, doesn't coffee hurt your teeth from the acid?). That will be absolutely perfect for the Japanese maple and my rhododendrons. The only problem is it's so fine it'll wash away if push back the bark mulch to water it. Good thing I got those water spikes. As soon as I have enough plastic bottles to set up water spikes on the rhodies, I'll put coffee grinds on top of the roots with the spike to the side.