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Start Seeds in Recycled K-Cups + Use Coffee Grounds in the Garden

Save those k-cups! They make wonderful seed starter cups for the garden come spring and the coffee grounds make for nice (free) soil enrichment!

K-Cup Recycling: Toss the Grounds in your Garden and Turn the Cups into Seed Starters

Save those k-cups! They make wonderful seed starter cups for the garden come spring!

A little backstory. My husband bought us a Keurig coffee maker for Christmas. If you know me (as he clearly does!), it was the perfect gift for me.

I have such a short attention span, I get bored with a coffee flavor before I even finish a pot. So this way I can have three cups of coffee, each a different flavor if I so choose.

I also tend to drink erratic amounts of coffee each day, depending on how busy I am, how distracted I get, or how cold it is outside so often a pot would sit all day until I finally threw it out.

So I really love the Keurig and I think when all is said and done, we will waste less coffee using it, but it really bothered me to just toss the used K-cups in the trash.

Start Seeds in Recycled K-Cups + Use Coffee Grounds in the Garden

I hate to throw away anything that might be able to be used. I hate waste. So I decided at the very least, I would empty the coffee grounds out of the plastic K-cups and start saving the grounds to throw on our garden this spring.

recycling k-cups for the garden

K-Cup Recycling | Coffee Grounds in the Garden

Coffee grounds improve the quality of your garden soil. High in nitrogen, a sprinkling of coffee grounds in the soil benefits crops such as leafy greens, squash and tomatoes specifically.

The decomposing coffee grounds also create beneficial fungus that fights off other non-beneficial mold and fungal colonies in the soil.

The grounds also help repel slugs and improve the texture of the soil to attract earthworms. In short, coffee grounds are good for your garden!

So I carefully started spooning the spent grounds out of each cup ... and imagine my surprise to find a very fine mesh filter inside!

To those of you familiar with the whole Keurig/K-Cup thing, I'm sure this is not news, but remember, until this past Christmas I had never even seen a K-Cup before.

Now the wheels started turning. I could plant seeds in them!

The mesh would allow water to drain but keep the soil from leaking out... and there's even a little hole in the bottom of each cup for drainage made by the machine when it brews the coffee, making them THE perfect seed starter containers!

Now I was on a mission! I called my husband at work (where they have a Keurig as well) and asked him to set up a cardboard box with a sign on it for everyone to recycle their cups and then he could bring them home for me!

As an FYI, that was met with less than the enthusiasm that I would have hoped for from him, but this is the man who last year brought home trash bags full of empty coffee canisters so I could make a set of these cute Chicken Feed Supplement Canisters

So I felt confident that lugging home a small cardboard box of K-cups was far less of an imposition and he would come through for me.

And he did. In no time I had enough empty K-cups to get started with my spring seed planting.

K-Cup Recycling | Start Seeds in Cups 

So to get started, I scooped out the used grounds and rinsing out the cups I had (and yes, I did go through the trash and fish out all the additional cups I could find!) I then needed to find a tray to hold them.

Really anything will do and the beauty of this is you can go small-scale and grow just a few cups of seeds in a Tupperware container or even on a small plate or cake pan, or use a cookie sheet or large plastic tray and grow them in bulk.

I decided to start off small and use a plastic organic spinach container with a lid, since I hated to throw that out as well if I could use it. With the lid, it made a perfect 'greenhouse' to hold in moisture.



Here's what you Need to Start Seeds in K-Cups |

Empty, rinsed out K-Cups (coffee K-cups only, the tea cups don't have the filters, I discovered)

Coffee grounds from the cups

Fine point black Sharpie marker

A tray or container with a cover ( or some plastic wrap)

Potting soil

Small spoon

Seeds

Spray bottle filled with water

Here's What you Do |

  • I first labeled each K-cup with the type of seeds I would be planting using the Sharpie.
  • Then it was a simple job to fill each cup with some soil (I stirred some of the spent coffee grounds into the potting soil first and then sprinkled the rest over our garden).
  • Next I pushed a few seeds in to each K-Cup, scooped some potting soil/coffee grounds into each cup to cover the seeds with dirt, and then set the cups on small stones set in the bottom of the tray for good drainage.
  • Then I watered the cups and then covered them with plastic wrap to create a greenhouse effect.

After a quick watering, I set the top of the container in place and I was ready to set my K-Cup seed sprouting tray in a sunny window to sprout.

I misted the soil a few times a day to keep it moist. In just a few days, I already had some clover sprouting!

Once it had warmed up enough and my seedlings were starting to outgrow their little cups, I transplanted them outside to my vegetable garden. And I felt good that I had put all those empty K-cups to good use!



starting seeds in k-cups







Safety Side Note for anyone questioning using plastic to start seeds (although many seed starter trays are plastic as well), Keurig’s website addresses the BPA concern with the following statement:


“K-Cup® and Vue® packs do not contain BPA and are constructed using FDA-approved food safe materials. We also use FDA-approved food safe materials in our K-Cup® and Vue® brewing systems, and neither system contains BPA within its water paths (as of January 1, 2010 for our K-Cup® system).” (http://www.keurig.com/social-responsibility)

If you're still concerned, you can make seed starter cups from toilet tissue and paper towel rolls, eggshells, or here are some more ideas for repurposed seed starter cups.

Don't you just LOVE recycling/upcycling/repurposing?


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This article is featured over at MSN Lifestyle and Good Housekeeping.

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