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Coffee Grounds and Gardening: Don’t Do it for the Acid
posted 7th June 2010 in Gardening by Jim

In a recent segment on NPR’s Science Friday, gardening expert Shawn Verrall rejected that the old habit many of us have of dumping our coffee grounds on plants that need acid. According to Verrall, the act of brewing coffee takes most of the acid out of the grounds.

I’d heard the coffee grounds advice from so many sources that I was dubious about Verrall’s claim, but a simple pH test proves Verrall right. Before brewing, Wicked Joe Bella Maria coffee grounds have a pH of about 5.5. After brewing, the grounds have a pH of about 6.5.

The bad news is that if you’ve been relying on coffee to keep your blueberries or rhododendrons acidified, you won’t have accomplished much. But the good news is that those coffee grounds are great overall fertilizer anyway, loaded with nitrogen and carbon and quickly decomposing into the dirt.

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2 Comments to “Coffee Grounds and Gardening: Don’t Do it for the Acid”

  1. Green Man says:
    6/8/2010 at 1:29 am

    Oh, darn. Thanks for leading us to this information. What you still can do for the acid is to lay down clippings from your Yule tree as mulch.

    Reply
  2. Jacob says:
    6/8/2010 at 8:45 am

    I had always heard that leaves will help your soil stay acidic. Mulch up lots of leaves

    Reply

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