Have you been busy grinding away? 7 helpful ways to reuse leftover coffee grounds in your garden.

If you've found yourself staying safe in your home, you may have been making more coffee at home lately?! So before you throw away all those extra coffee granules, let me share with you 7 additional uses for your daily brew’s remnants.

Coffee is good for more than just waking you up in the morning. Before you toss used grounds, consider putting them to use in the garden, from composting to cleaning.....

Repel garden pests

Sprinkle used grounds liberally around your plants, or the perimeter of your garden, to deter pests such as ants, slugs, and snails.

Invite worms

Worms like to eat coffee grounds, but offer them in moderation to keep their home at proper acidity levels. If you work the grounds deeper into your soil, you’ll attract these little garden helpers.

Boost compost

Coffee grounds are rich in nitrogen, so they make excellent green matter. Just add the coffee grounds, along with the filter, directly to your compost pile.

Fertilise plants

To make a coffee fertiliser, mix old grounds with dead grass clippings, brown leaves, or dry straw, then spread the mixture around acid-loving plants. Vegetable plants that do best in mildly acidic soil include carrots, cauliflower, celery, cucumbers, garlic, sweet peppers, pumpkins, winter squash and tomatoes. But it's also great for lroses.

Jump start a harvest

To increase the yield of plants such as carrots and radishes, mix dried coffee grounds in with carrot and radish seeds before you plant them.

Make a gardener’s soap

Coffee granules act as a great abrasive. To make this exfoliating soap:

• melt one 4oz (113.4 grams) bar of glycerin soap
• add 1⁄3 cup coffee grounds
• mix well
• pour into a mould to set until it has hardened.

You need to use a mould that can withstand the high temperatures of molten soap, and is flexible so the soap can be easily removed. Silicone moulds are ideal for this. The soap will take 12-24 hours to harden.

Clean garden pots and tools

Sprinkle coffee grounds onto a scrub brush and use them as an abrasive to remove stuck-on soil from pots, and to get in to the smallest of crevice on your gardening tools.