It seems like coffee grounds can be put to good use in more ways than one around the house, and they can be particularly beneficial for your backyard. This staple ingredient is used to keep pests out of lawns and gardens, which is mostly due to its acidic smell. The pungent aroma can often mask scents, so creatures cannot find the food sources they’re after. Some nuisance critters just stay away altogether because they dislike the stench. And this is certainly the case for one slithering creature that usually likes to make an appearance around springtime when on the prowl for food: the almighty snake.
Snakes seem to make us all stop in our tracks for at least a second, and finding one in your backyard is an uncomfortable feeling that might make you feel a little unsafe. The good news is only a handful of snakes are poisonous, such as cottonmouths, copperheads, and rattlesnakes. Most other kinds found in backyards, like gopher snakes, are relatively harmless around humans. But if they still make you feel uneasy, particularly around your pets and kids, using coffee grounds as a scent deterrent might make them go away. Snakes rely heavily on their sense of smell and stay far from coffee grounds simply because the aroma smells bad to them. Therefore, spreading grounds in problematic areas on your property is a plausible solution.
Snakes dislike the smell of coffee grounds
Snakes use their tongues to pick up all kinds of scents in the air when looking for food and navigating their routes. Because of this, scent deterrents such as coffee grounds are effective at keeping them away because the smell is overpowering and unpleasant to them. On top of that, snakes dislike the granulated texture of coffee grounds on their skin, so they tend to avoid sliding over large mounds of them. With that in mind, if you’re trying to keep snakes out of a particular area like a home garden, making a border around the space with coffee grounds creates a barrier and protects your crop.
When spreading the grounds in your garden or yard, carry them out in a large container and spread them out with a shovel. While choosing spots to concentrate your efforts on, keep in mind that snakes are driven to places based on the need for food, water, and shelter.
Trim yard before spreading coffee grounds
Regarding shelter, snakes look for cool moist areas to nest and prefer yards with overgrown grass or dense shrubs to hide out and hunt their prey. So, keeping your grass trimmed and yard maintained is equally as important and a foolproof way to keep snakes from slithering around your yard. That said, coffee grounds should be used as a secondary method to keep snakes away. Ultimately, it’s important to determine what’s attracting them in the first place — consider the nine sneaky reasons snakes and other pests won’t stay out of your yard.
Snakes usually leave if they don’t find what they’re looking for. If they keep coming back or if you find more than one of them, you might have rodents which snakes eat for food. In this case, coffee grounds can provide dual benefits because they’re toxic to mice. The smell repels rodents, and if ingested, the caffeine can make them sick or even kill them. Also, keep in mind what might be attracting mice in the first place.
