Coffee bad for gardens

[FILMNET]

No it was crazy i had a disease that killed all plants, the leafs would dry up from the bottom, fruits were ok . This came from the right side, each plant got it to the left ever week 1 plant died. i pulled them out. I had 1 plant on each pole, 5 on each side squash in the middle peppers to the left middle, all the garden gets sun all day. It come up behind the garden on the the left and goes to the right, great sun.The left side was a new garden last year. I put most of the coffee to the left in the middle and moved it around in spring. never again for me only compost and Lime.

[Tracydr]

Originally Posted by GaryStPaul

I'm no expert, but I do follow posts about coffee on the soil and compost forum elsewhere. The consensus there seems to be that coffee grounds (what's left after the brewing process) are very close to neutral. Put differently: brewed coffee is highly acidic, grounds are not.

So, if I need to change my pH, I'm better using brewed coffee?
Wonder how much it would cost, using the cheapest of the cheap coffee and how much I would need to maintain pH of my "8-ish" soils.

[Boutique Tomatoes]

Originally Posted by Tracydr

So, if I need to change my pH, I'm better using brewed coffee?
Wonder how much it would cost, using the cheapest of the cheap coffee and how much I would need to maintain pH of my "8-ish" soils.

I don't believe that would do much, because that will be a temporary change that will dissappear as soon as the coffee is washed out of the soil.

My personal opinion is that for me all the coffee grounds have had both a temporary lowering affect combined with a long term better soil micro organism health from the added organic material. I think they're doing something that is helping oxidize the sulfur and that is what is actually owering the PH.

I've got baseline tests of the soil in the new garden and I'll get it tested again this fall after the season ends to see what all of them have done there. A never ending experiment.

[mike5953]

Here's something I found published by Linda Chalker-Scott, Ph.D. at Washington State University:

Less straightforward are the changes in pH that occur during decomposition.
A commonly held assumption states that coffee grounds are acidic, but this does not hold true experimentally. While two studies on coffee ground composting reported mildly acidic pHs of 4.6 and 5.26, others have measured neutral (7.7) to somewhat alkaline (8.4) pH levels.
One researcher found that the pH of soil treated with coffee compost increased after 14 to 21 days of incubation, gradually decreasing thereafter. Obviously the pH of decomposing coffee grounds is not stable and one shouldn’t assume that it will always, or ever, be acidic.

Here's a link to the original document: http://www.puyallup.wsu.edu/~linda%2...%20grounds.pdf

[bughunter99]

Originally Posted by FILMNET

No it was crazy i had a disease that killed all plants, the leafs would dry up from the bottom, fruits were ok . This came from the right side, each plant got it to the left ever week 1 plant died. i pulled them out. I had 1 plant on each pole, 5 on each side squash in the middle peppers to the left middle, all the garden gets sun all day. It come up behind the garden on the the left and goes to the right, great sun.The left side was a new garden last year. I put most of the coffee to the left in the middle and moved it around in spring. never again for me only compost and Lime.

It doesn't sound like what occurred was a pH issue. Sounds like it was rapidly progressing disease. Question is whether or not the grounds brought it in or whether the the grounds created the environment to make conditions for it more optimal.

[RayR]

I agree, it doesn't sound like a PH issue to me either.