Fertilizing Rose Bushes with Coffee Grinds

Rose bushes are beautiful plants that produce dozens of fragrant blooms everyone can enjoy. If you want to have healthy rose bushes, then fertilizing them with coffee grinds is a natural way to do while also amending the soil. It is considered an organic fertilizer and is easy to make and use. In this day and age when being environmentally responsible is so important, this type of fertilizer is a good choice for the planet, as well as your plants.

How to Make Coffee Grinds Fertilizer

There are several methods of using the coffee grinds to fertilize your rose bushes. One way is to just put the coffee grinds in a compost heap with other waste from your kitchen and use that to sprinkle around the roses. Another method is to just sprinkle plain grounds that are dried up on the ground just around the roses. Additionally, you can mix the grounds with wood ash, in a 3 to 1 ratio of coffee grinds to ash, and mix that into the soil around the plants. Finally, you can mix about a 1/2 pound of used grounds with 5 gallons of water for a mixture you can pour on the rose bushes about twice a month.

Why are Coffee Grinds Good for Rose Bushes?

The reason coffee grinds are good for rose bushes is that the grounds have nitrogen in them. Roses need neutral to acidic soil, and if you add coffee grinds, it will help make the pH neutral to acidic. Coffee grinds also help the soil looser, which gives the roots more space to grow and helps deliver the nutrients they need to survive. And, believe it or not, bugs and pests are repelled by coffee grounds, so this helps keep them away from your plants. Importantly, coffee grinds have been shown to aid growth.

Possible Risk Factors

It is possible to use coffee grounds too much and too often. This could make your soil too acidic, so be sure not to use more than 1 or 2 cups of the grinds per rose bush. Another thing that can occur from overuse of the grinds is that they could go moldy if not worked into the soil correctly. Therefore, make sure that the grinds mixture is buried into the soil around the rose bush so that the area looks like dried tree leaves.

Ways to Get Lots of Grinds

If you are not a coffee drinker, one way you can get grinds to use on your roses is to have a coffee drinking friend save them for you. Another sometimes effective method is to go to one of the local restaurants or coffee shops in your area and ask for their old coffee grounds. They will more than likely be happy to save them for you and give them to you for no cost.

Coffee grinds are one of the fertilizers you can use on rose bushes which is easy to use, organic and sometimes even free.