Back to coffee grounds . . .

I've used coffee grounds mixed with shredded leaves and cocoa shells to mulch tomatoes. Doesn't change the taste (unless it makes them better).

Many, MANY pounds of coffee grounds from a cafeteria go into my home compost piles. Yes, it gets a little rank while waiting to go into the piles. Curiously, the freshly built piles tend to have a barnyard smell. (One visitor who was allergic to horses got very nervous because he was sure there was a pony around here somewhere.)

No.

Nope, not a bit.

Use the household discards around my strawberries and in the vegetable bed, and the only down side seems to be to try not to get it on leaves in the strawberry bed because it will burn them. Does a great job of keeping out the slugs from eating all the berries.

-=>epm

No, the tomatoes will not pick up the coffee taste. What you have to be careful of though is getting too low of a pH level in the soil. Coffee grounds generally have a pH of around 4.0 (thats why coffee sometimes gives you that sour stomach feeling). Tomatoes like a pH of about 6.0-6.5, so if you use a lot of coffee grounds, you may need to add a little lime every other year or so.

Bob S.

Minor quibble. Tomatoes are amongst the most pH tolerant of veggies, and they will grow happily in 5.0 soil. But you are right that they will tend to taste inferior. Also, of course, you need a ton of coffee grounds to change the pH of one ton of pH 6.0 soil down to 5.0. That is a whole lot of coffee grounds - most people should not worry about it. I do use tons of wood chips (pH 4.0-4.5) and have to make sure I mix some wood ash (pH 10.4) in them.