Coffee Grounds For Roses

Using coffee grounds for roses is a fabulous way to improve the health of your plants, helping them to produce those gorgeous flowers you’ve been dreaming of. But there are a few things you’ll need to know before getting started.

Conditions Roses Prefer

Roses do best when grown in soil that is slightly acidic. A pH of around 6.5 is typically considered to be optimum, although anywhere from 6.0 to 6.9 will do. When the soil pH is outside of this range, however, roses will not be able to absorb nutrients properly.

Are Coffee Grounds Good For Roses?

Because used grounds can be slightly acidic, when added to the soil they can help to lower the pH to the appropriate levels needed for the best rose health and growth. (Using a pH test or pH meter can help you to get more insight into the soil condition you are working with and your results).

Roses like coffee grounds for many other reasons as well. As they decompose the grounds provide nitrogen, an essential nutrient. Nitrogen is particularly important for roses in the spring when they are putting out new growth. The grounds act as a slow-release fertilizer by providing the nitrogen in low concentrations but constantly over time.

Feeding roses coffee grounds is also popular with gardeners because they provide other important nutrients as well such as phosphorous, potassium, copper, and magnesium. Grounds help the soil retain the water and moisture it needs.

Helpful garden worms eat coffee grounds and further enrich the soil roses are growing in by leaving behind nutrient-rich castings. And luckily because of their dislike for the caffeine in coffee grounds snails and slugs, will stay away instead of eating your flowers.

Feeding Roses Coffee Grounds

There are several different ways you can apply your coffee grounds.

Directly To The Soil

The most straightforward is to simply sprinkle a thin layer of used grounds, which have cooled to room temperature, on top of the soil surrounding your rose bushes.

You don’t want to add more than this, however. Adding too thick of a layer can cause the grounds to compact forming a barrier that blocks water and oxygen from reaching the roots of your plant. You can also mix or dig them into the soil. By adding grounds directly to the soil over time it can help to lower pH levels to the slightly acidic levels roses prefer.

In The Compost

Another option would be to add your used coffee grounds to your compost. When it has matured the compost won’t lower the pH of your soil, but the grounds will help to make excellent quality compost.

In the compost, the grounds will have time to decay so when applied to the soil the nutrients will be available for faster absorption.

A Quick Note

While feeding or fertilizing roses with coffee grounds can without a doubt be very beneficial for rose health, they don’t provide everything roses need. So instead of a substitute for a commercial organic fertilizer formulated for roses, grounds should be used as a supplement.

Using coffee grounds for roses can help to provide your plants with essential nutrients and improve the soil they are growing in. And when you’d like to lower the soil’s pH, grounds can help to create that slight acidity roses love.

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