Coffee Fertiliser

Zebra Plant

This zebra plant really struggled outside. Then, when I brought it indoors, it thrived – probably because I added some compost to the soil and started watering it every day. It’s a big drinker.

But before too long, the colours started to fade (the dark purple back almost totally vanished) and the edges of each leaf – even new ones – started turning brown. My response was to water every couple of weeks with a seaweed feed.

Better, but not good enough. Maybe I need to give it more time (it’s been about 2 months I’ve been feeding it?) but I’d rather help it as much as I can as soon as possible. Coincidentally I recently found some information about using coffee grounds in the garden (thanks Shane for finding me). After reading coffee grounds to ground I started to wonder if this might be something I could try. That is, if I could get my hands on a substantial quantity of used coffee grounds.

Organic used coffee grounds

Enter Bunnings – the local hardware cum garden centre. The cafe there generally throws away its old coffee grounds which then clog a landfill somewhere. A woman who works in the cafe is making a proposal to Bunnings to offer used grounds to customers as compost. Right place, right time and I got myself a bag of used coffee grounds.

Yesterday I dug a few tablespoons (maybe 6?) of coffee grounds into my zebra plant pot, watered it well and now I watch and wait to be impressed. If it goes as I’m hoping, I’ll be putting more grounds into more pot plants. The website I mention above suggests used coffee grounds make a great slow release fertiliser and I’m optimistic. Worst case, the coffee goes into the compost where I’ve no doubt it will add value.