will coffee grounds kill grass?

So, you know how your local coffee shop sells whole beans for you to grind up at home? Or maybe you’ve heard that the filter paper used to filter your cup of joe contains a substance called carbon dioxide, or CO2.

Whatever the case may be, the consensus is that if there’s one thing you should not do with your ground coffee beans, it spills them on your lawn. Right? Well…wrong.

Every time we drink a cup of coffee, we release little bits and pieces of ourselves into the air around us. That’s because when we drink coffee, we’re expelling the bitter acids found in raw coffee beans called caffeine…which smell really bad when they’re released into the atmosphere.

If you’re wondering what else CO2 smells like, perhaps try this test: take a whiff of some clean air and then immediately follow it up with a sniff of some fresh-smelling fabric or carpet cleaner.

You should be able to smell CO2 in both instances; in fact, if anything else were present in that environment other than CO2, then you would have noticed something unpleasant and unusual about it by now. Fortunately for us though, CO2 also plays an important role as well as part of our ecosystem.

When green plants feed on acidic carbon dioxide-rich soil containing humus – their natural source of this nutrient – they absorb more nutrients from their soil than they would from any other source. 

CO2 and Lawn Care: A natural partnership

The big question, then, is how do we go about killing the grass in our lawn while simultaneously avoiding killing the CO2-rich soil?

Well, there are a few ways, but one of them is to use coffee grounds. If you’re wondering how this works, your answer comes in the form of CO2 and oxygen.

When you place coffee grounds on your lawn, they will absorb CO2 from the atmosphere and excrete it as carbon dioxide-rich soil.

The process also happens entirely naturally without any interference from outside sources like fertilizers or pesticides.

So by using your morning cup of joe for a little bit of green care for your grass, you’ll be doing yourself a favor.

How do coffee beans release CO2?

The CO2 released by ground coffee beans is a result of three chemical reactions:

1). The first reaction is the Maillard browning reaction between the coffee molecules and water which results in the formation of melanoidins (the brown particles found in coffee).

2). The second reaction is lipid peroxidation, which yields ketones.

3). The third reaction is the formation of acetic acid, which releases CO2.

How do coffee beans contain acids?

It’s not coffee that contains acids, coffee just contains compounds called phytochelatins that are able to chelate (complex with) heavy metals in our body.

Coffee also contains chlorogenic and trigonellic acids; they are important in maintaining good health by reducing the inflammatory response and preventing oxidative stress, meanwhile they act as antioxidants to protect us from free radical damage.

Why is it important to avoid spilling coffee grounds on your lawn?

There is no need to worry about coffee grounds spoiling your lawn. Coffee grounds are ecologically safe, and will not harm grass.

Coffee grounds are rich in potassium and nitrogen, two nutrients that are essential to the health of your lawn. Additionally, they can act as a fertilizer by encouraging the growth of healthy grassroots.

If coffee grounds are applied correctly, there is no need to worry about them affecting the health of your lawn. If you apply coffee grounds in the early summer when your grass is still growing vigorously, there is a high likelihood that it will be able to fully assimilate into your lawn.

In this instance, it would be unlikely for them to become compacted or compacted soil (compacted soil turns brown and shrivels). Though this may not be the ideal scenario from a lawn care perspective, it is not uncommon for the roots of lawn grasses to become embedded within compacted soil.

It should be noted that if used excessively or continuously over an extended period of time, coffee grounds can damage the health of your lawn by depriving it of some essential nutrients (i.e., potassium and nitrogen).

However, if used appropriately in conjunction with other fertilizers, it would be very unlikely for this to occur.