How to Plant With Coffee Grounds

Collect coffee grounds for composting. Dump used coffee grounds in a small bucket, if you drink coffee on a daily basis and only maintain a small garden or potted plants. Contact your local coffee shop and make arrangements to collect coffee grounds if you maintain a larger garden.

Dump the grounds on your compost pile. A compost pile can be as simple or complex as you want it to be, based on your gardening needs. Generally speaking, a shallow trench at least 3 feet by 3 feet at the side of a garden can serve as a compost pile.

Turn the coffee ground compost pile weekly with a long-handle shovel. Turning the pile regularly gives the grounds even exposure to sunlight above and dark moisture below to aid decomposition. University of Oregon's Cindy Wise says that a coffee ground compost pile turned weekly could be ready for use in as little as three months.

Fertilize your garden soil for planting by working the decomposed coffee ground compost in a ratio of 1 part compost, 3 parts soil, and working that into the ground. If you do not have a lot of coffee ground compost, work the fertilizer only into those small mounds where you plan to grow your seeds. Work the compost about 6 inches into the ground.

Add liquid nitrogen fertilizer to garden as a supplemental fertilizer. Adding nitrogen fertilizer supplies nutrients for your plants while microbes use naturally occurring nitrogen in coffee grounds to continue to break the grounds down, according to Science Daily. You can purchase nitrogen fertilizer at a local gardening store.