in-ground coffee grounds

 Tom Broome (cycadjungle) wrote an article called “Coffee, Cycads’ New Best Friend?”  <--- that's a link
He has also used it with his pepper plants and has conversed with Ramon (walkgood) about it in his 2013 Glog. Ramon went on to conduct some experiments with it. you can read about it starting here: http://thehotpepper.com/topic/36338-walkgood-2013-to-2014/page-24#entry788508
 
You can also read where Tom chimed in starting here: http://thehotpepper.com/topic/36338-walkgood-2013-to-2014/page-24#entry788636
 
Personally, I like using coffee in my soil mixes. It's a great source of Nitrogen, I typically use about 10% coffee, I pick it up from Starbucks, in my soil mixes and have added it to my compost teas also. The important thing is to keep it fresh. Don't use coffee that's more than a week old and if your not going to use it right away then freeze it till your ready to use it.
 
RocketMan said:
 
 The important thing is to keep it fresh. Don't use coffee that's more than a week old and if your not going to use it right away then freeze it till your ready to use it.
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How come? I ask because I have a huge bag that I've saved all year and was planning to use... So not a good idea then? Just throw it into the compost pile in the yard and wait til next year?
 
AaronRiot said:
 
How come? I ask because I have a huge bag that I've saved all year and was planning to use... So not a good idea then? Just throw it into the compost pile in the yard and wait til next year?
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Feed them to your worms and don't worry about the age.  The worms will either eat them or leave them alone.  Usually people freeze worm food to speed up the breakdown process.
 
I use coffee grounds in my bins for a bunch of reasons:  good worm food, easy source of nitrogen, balances out my water's high high alkalinity.  As an added bonus if you pack enough of them into a container, it will heat up and keep the worms warm over the winter - gotta be careful here though.
 
Kyox89 said:
So what do i do with the grounds? I dont have worms to feed. -.-"

And its kind hard to find tomato food here. Any alternative i can use?
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It's not an either / or situation.  Go ahead and add them to the soil, they shouldn't hurt anything at all.  Just be aware that they break down rather slowly and won't do much for the plants until soil bacteria and fungus do their thing.
 
Tomato fertilizer is often recommended since it's fairly common, and the plants are close relatives to peppers.  Any balanced 'general purpose' fertilizer, preferably with some minerals, should work fairly well.   
 
Geonerd said:
 
It's not an either / or situation.  Go ahead and add them to the soil, they shouldn't hurt anything at all.  Just be aware that they break down rather slowly and won't do much for the plants until soil bacteria and fungus do their thing.
 
Tomato fertilizer is often recommended since it's fairly common, and the plants are close relatives to peppers.  Any balanced 'general purpose' fertilizer, preferably with some minerals, should work fairly well.   
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I saw some 8-8-8 pellet fertilisers which they state is humus. Humus is organic right? For some reason i want to use as much organic stuff as i can get because i think it helps the plants be better at deterring insects and bacteria.(i could be wrong)
So.. Should i get that humus fertiliser? If yes how do i apply it to the soil? Because most videos i've watched the person will use powdered ferts. I'm using cups at the moment and will continue growing my plants in bigger pots.

Thanks for your advise thus far!
 
Kyox89 said:
I saw some 8-8-8 pellet fertilisers which they state is humus. Humus is organic right? For some reason i want to use as much organic stuff as i can get because i think it helps the plants be better at deterring insects and bacteria.(i could be wrong)
So.. Should i get that humus fertiliser? If yes how do i apply it to the soil? Because most videos i've watched the person will use powdered ferts. I'm using cups at the moment and will continue growing my plants in bigger pots.

Thanks for your advise thus far!
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No idea!  ;)
 
I'm just a noob and have about zero experience with all this.  Suggest you start a new thread, or search for fert / soil suggestions.  There are plenty of old threads to read!
 
AFAIK, you can get excellent results with super-rich organic soil, or with proper ferts, or by using a combination.  It seems to come down to preference and convenience.
 
Proud Marine Dad said:
Not sure what they mean with those pellets but humus is the broken down remains of plant materials which we call compost.
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Managed to get some pictures today. They're small and ball shaped.



 
AaronRiot said:
 
How come? I ask because I have a huge bag that I've saved all year and was planning to use... So not a good idea then? Just throw it into the compost pile in the yard and wait til next year?
Click to expand...
 
 
Proud Marine Dad said:
I don't see where freezing them would do much.
I know some people think freezing coffee beans makes them stay fresh longer but that is not true either. :)
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I haven't read the article I linked to for a couple of years, I'll re-read it here in a bit, but if I remember correctly there are alkaloids in the coffee grounds that start to breakdown after a week or so. Freezing the grounds if your not going to be using them right away does 2 things. First it keeps those alkaloids from deteriorating and seconds it keeps the wet grounds from molding up. When I first started playing with the coffee grounds I had a bag that I left out in the garage. With the double whammy of Florida's heat and humidity when I found the bag the next weekend it was full of mold and stinky stuff. I should have been more explicit in what I meant by Fresh but that's what I meant.  Going to read it again now. :)
 
Yep, if you use what tom refer's to as Coffee Tea, he says in the article that it's only good for 3 to 4 months and then you need to brew a new batch of the coffee tea to use. The article itself is on Cycads, which is what he originally tested it on but he's commented, see the link to Walkgoods glog for example, in any number of Glogs about his use of coffee grounds with peppers.
 
Cheers,
RM
 
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