One of the best things you can do for your garden is to create a healthy compost to add to the soil. Many people consider the ingredients in compost to be trash, but they can give your plants a host of nutrients to help them thrive. Two common ingredients are leftover eggshells and spent coffee grounds. They have decently high amounts of calcium and nitrogen. They also work well as mulch. To get the most out of these ingredients, you have to know how to prepare and store them after you use them, and we’ll outline this below.
How to Use Eggshells and Coffee Grounds in Your Garden
You don’t want to throw your eggshells or coffee grounds straight into your compost pile without doing a little work first. For the eggshells, you want to give them a good rinse right after you crack them. Once you rinse them, shake them dry. You can also leave them to dry on your counter on a towel. When they’re dry, you’ll crush them as much as you can with your hands. Put the crushed eggshells in a container and set them in a sunny location to dry out. This can be indoors or outdoors.
Coffee also requires a few steps before it’s ready to go. When you brew coffee, you have grounds leftover. Instead of throwing them out, place them in a small bowl and let them dry out for a few hours. When they dry, you can put them in a sealed container with a lid.
You want to repeat these steps until you’ve managed to compile enough of both components to give a moderate amount to every plant. Before you feed your plants, combine the dried coffee grounds and eggshells together. Try to crush the eggshells down even more and sprinkle the whole mixture across your soil bed.
Continue to stockpile these two ingredients because you’ll want to repeat the process every few months to refresh the soil. Always add coffee grounds and eggshells before you start a new growing season. However, you want to ensure that you don’t overdo it. Adding too much compost or fertilizer can overwhelm your plants.
Add Coffee Grounds and Eggshells to Mulch
If you don’t want to add these two items to your compost for whatever reason, you still have another alternative. Instead of adding them to compost, you can mix them into your mulch. Mulch is a great thing to add to your garden, flower beds, or other landscaped areas in your yard.
Mulch can help regulate the soil temperature to keep it cooler when the scorching summer temperatures and humidity levels come around. Mulch is also great for locking moisture into the soil to help you reduce how much you have to water. All you have to do is get mulch from your local garden center and mix your coffee grounds and eggshells in. Once you do, spread a thick one to three-inch layer around all of your plants or vegetables.
Contact Evergreen Landscaping
If you’re not sure how much eggshells or coffee grounds to put in your garden, contact us. Our dedicated and experienced staff are ready and willing to help ensure your plants thrive all season long.