Modern rose varieties are not nearly as finicky as their historical reputation might suggest, but they still require the special care of their particular soil and sun preferences. Moreover, if you don’t live in an area with the right conditions, you might feel like you need to give up on your dream of having your own personal rose garden altogether. Thankfully, that’s not the case. Coffee grounds can be added to your garden, where they will enrich your soil and ward off pests, making your roses sing.
Used coffee grounds aren’t just a lumpy, muddy mess to clean up every morning. They’ve long been recommended as an addition to your compost pile, and coffee grounds can bring similar nourishing properties to the ground around your rose bushes. Moreover, they’re an effective pest deterrent, both for the likes of snails and slugs and for foraging animals like rabbits. There’s simply no denying that coffee grounds are a huge boon to rose gardens.
Coffee grounds nourish the soil
Coffee grounds are acidic, and roses just so happen to thrive best in acidic soil, but that’s not the only benefit this morning detritus can bring to your rose garden. Coffee grounds also contain high quantities of nitrogen — one of the main components of fertilizer. They are a natural way to enrich and fertilize your garden. While not suitable as a plant food, coffee grounds nonetheless attract and revitalize earthworm activity, further nourishing the soil around your roses. Mix them with bark mulch and spread them over the soil, or toil it into the soil of your beds for increased aeration and acidity, making sure to do this 7 or 8 inches deep and not directly next to the rose bushes as they could develop burn spots.
Another way to nourish your roses and soil with coffee grounds is by adding them to water. To be clear, this is not suggesting you pour leftover coffee onto your roses, as it’s much more acidic than the used grounds themselves. However, if you add 1 cup of used coffee grounds to 1 gallon of water, you can then spray your roses with this mixture once a month or so. This will evenly cover the plants with the aforementioned nutrients and let them travel down to the roots.
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Coffee grounds keep pests away
Nobody likes having slugs or snails eating all their garden plants. Their affinity for leaves and flowers makes them a particular menace to roses, which they find irresistible and can absolutely destroy if allowed to infest the area. Luckily, coffee grounds keep them away. Coffee is a diuretic, thanks to its high caffeine content, which means it dehydrates you. Well, it actually does the same to slugs and snails, eventually killing them if ingested. The acidic quality of coffee grounds is also unpleasant to these pests, and their rough texture can actually injure them. It all amounts to a multitude of reasons snails and slugs will stay away from your coffee-enhanced soil.
Slimy mollusks aren’t the only animals repelled by coffee grounds in the soil. The strong, distinct odor of the grounds is also known to deter various foraging animals, like deer, rabbits, squirrels, chipmunks, raccoons, rodents, and cats. If you’ve ever had a furry animal munching on your rosebuds, chances are coffee grounds will keep them at bay, allowing your roses to grow and flourish, eventually exhibiting the majestic beauty they’re known and loved for.
