Do any of you use coffee grounds in your landscape beds? A friend of mine sprays a coffee ground "tea" on her Sago Palms which she claims controlls cycad scale. I can understand coffee being a repellant, but can it also act as an insecticide? What would it do to Slugs, which are my major enemy in my outdoor Amaryllis beds. I know a lot of people get coffee grounds from Starbucks. I'm curious to know how gardeners use it.

Barbara look under "Tips", someone wrote about coffee killing slugs awhile ago, I don't recall who it was, but you should be able to find it easily enough.

Thanks: I'm still confused. According to the Tips, slugs hate coffee grounds but earthworms love them. Now if I could just get the earthworms to eat the slugs!

This is the Tip I was talking about, I guess there were 2 different ones.

November 27, 2011
COFFEE KILLS SLUGS & SNAILS. Make very strong caffeinated coffee, then mix it half and half with water and put into a trigger or compressed-air sprayer. Spray on plants and the ground that snails & slugs travel on. As they move over the treated areas, they take up the caffeine through their pseudopod (foot) and it gives them heart attacks in 72 hours. Cheap coffee works as well as the more expensive sort. I use espresso because it's more finely ground (works better in my machine). I also run the water through the grounds more than once to extract as much as possible. Cheers to the University of Hawaii for discovering an elegant and simple solution to nasty critters.

Tip by LabourofLove
Photo by gardengus

I was wondering how the coffee worked on slugs. Its worth a try. Thanks

Your very welcome Barbara.

Hmm, I have tried a mixture of water, dishwashing liquid and tabasco sauce..it is the only thing that worked vs the scale on my cycad.

Between the caffine high, and the capsaicin burn, these poor creatures don't stand a chance.

bsharf said:Between the caffine high, and the capsaicin burn, these poor creatures don't stand a chance.