Household Tip: Plants on Caffeine

I use to work in an office and to brighten up the working space, we had several lovely, and very large, plants scattered around the office. At the end of my first working day, I was somewhat stunned to see my fellow receptionist pour the day's left over coffee into the pots of the plants. At first I thought that because we were nowhere near a sink, this was the only convenient place to dispose of the coffee that didn't get used by the end of the day. But after this kept occurring, day after day, I was soon to discover that this was one of the reasons why the plants in the office were so full, strong and luscious.

I learned that even plants can use a bit of caffeine on occasion to spark speedy, healthy growth.

After learning of this tip, I started to put this into practice in my own home and to my amazement, my plants were now flourishing, when once they hadn't. I don't often drink coffee, but there is usually some left over tea in the teapot after the evening meal. Tea also contains caffeine, so it stood to reason that tea should work equally as well. I now started to pour the left over tea into my plants every now and then.

Since doing this, I haven't had to throw a dying, yellowed, or dried out plant away, as I often had to do in the past. My plants now flourish and double in size in no time.

There is yet another benefit to giving your leftover tea or coffee to your plants. By doing so, you don't have to pour the unused beverage down the sink, causing unsightly stains (as coffee and tea tend to do) on your stainless steel or porcelain sink. This in turn will reduce the amount of bleaching products used in order to rid the sink of these stubborn, unsightly stains.

Suggestion: If you find that you often have large quantities of tea or coffee left over, dilute the remaining portion with water. This way you are not giving your plants too much caffeine, too often. I'm not sure what an overdose of caffeine would do to your plants, if anything.