Must be the coffee grounds

[Tampa Scott]

Following the tip to use coffee grounds to fight the Cycad Scale, my Cycads are Scale free this summer.

[Moose]

Scott - does not help the croton scale.

[Patrick]

Looks great. I always am dissapointed in tropical places when cycads are sickly and covered with that scale.

May I ask where you got the coffee ground tip from? Maybe I might start trying that myself. I always seem to have a lot of grounds around here anyways....

[virtualpalm]

Patrick, the coffee reference originated as an article written in the Cycad Newsletter a couple years ago. The link is included below:

http://www.cycad.org/documents/Broome-Coffee-2007.pdf

As for coffee not working on croton scale, is it possible that not enough coffee grounds were used or not enough time has elapsed to allow the plants to absorb the entomotoxic alkyloids?

Jody

[Brad-Tampa]

Scott,

Since I began using coffee grounds year before last, it seems to help control the onset and growth of CAS. But once it establishes a presence, it seems like only the hort oil mix really is effective. This year however the scale has been mostly absent on my Cycas and Stangeria. Looking around town, the overall infestations are limited, maybe due to the cold winter or increased rain? Local C. revoluta that are never treated have flushed fronds early in the spring that are still clean.

Brad

[BeerPlant]

Scott,

Since I began using coffee grounds year before last, it seems to help control the onset and growth of CAS. But once it establishes a presence, it seems like only the hort oil mix really is effective. This year however the scale has been mostly absent on my Cycas and Stangeria. Looking around town, the overall infestations are limited, maybe due to the cold winter or increased rain? Local C. revoluta that are never treated have flushed fronds early in the spring that are still clean.

Brad

I can concur as well that in my area I havent seen any outbreaks nor have I treated any of my plants yet(have been completely lazy) but this reminds me to start taking trips to Starbucks.

Bill

[palmislandRandy]

If I leave the Starbuck grounds in the bag too long it develops a greenish mold. Is it still safe to spread around? I would think the mold might be benificial.

Randy

[virtualpalm]

Randy, one thing I noticed with the moldy grounds is that the insectidical efficacy of the alkyloids in the ground is greatly diminished as if the mold is actually breaking down the chemicals in the grounds that provide the control. I would encourage those of you using coffee grounds on CAS (or other insects) not to let them sit too long unless you dry them out real well. From the standpoint of improving soil quality and increasing soil organic matter, the molded grounds are just fine... they just aren't going to control any insects.

Jody

[Kailua_Krish]

Do fresh coffee grounds work too? Like unbrewed ones in a maxwell can?

-Krishna

[Patrick]

Do fresh coffee grounds work too? Like unbrewed ones in a maxwell can?

-Krishna

Krishna,

I'll tell ya what, Every week or two, go to the store & buy a can of Maxwell& then send it to me, in about a weeks time, I'll send back 1 can of used coffee grounds- ready for use!

Hey, maybe I should post an ad for this 'service' on Craigslist!

[virtualpalm]

Do fresh coffee grounds work too? Like unbrewed ones in a maxwell can?

-Krishna

From my understanding, fresh (unbrewed) grounds are highly acidic. I would not recommend it.

Jody

[cycadjungle]

I hear comments like some of these from time to time, so I thought I would add something here. People read some of my articles and get wrong ideas from time to time. They read my article on cutting off leaves from cycads and they take from the article that I suggest cutting all the leaves from a sago in the spring to make it grow faster, even though I tell people in the article not to do that because it takes energy out of the plant until the new leaves are full size.

In the coffee article, I get people who think that they can use the grounds as a mulch and it will work systemically to treat a plant no matter how large that plant might be. That is not the truth. It DOES work systemically on smaller plants like coonties, but it does not work on sago with 4 foot stems, it just doesn't translocate the chemicals in the amount it would need to kill the insects that far up. The mulch is mainly used to kill anything in the root system on these large plants. Coffee DOES work to kill the instects on the foliage of larger plants, but it needs to be used as a spray like I get from my barrel shown in the article. It has been almost 4 years since I have had to use a pesticide on my plants as a direct contact spray because of the use of the coffee on any plant in my nursery, so I am happy about that. Jody has covered most of the questions very well, but since I am here, about the mold, as Jody said, the coffee doesn't sdeem to work after it has had the mold on it for a while. So, the idea is get some from Starbucks and try to use it in some way within a couple of days just to make sure. Since I wrote the article, we have found that it works on mealy bugs, aphids, all kinds of scales, white flies, and even spider mites and I have not seen any toxicity on any plants so far. It has also repelled ants and grasshoppers and kept them away from eating some of my plants, or going near them.

[PalmatierMeg]

I run a pot of water through used coffee grounds, then refrigerate the weak coffee brew. I mix a cup or so with 1 gallon water in my pressure sprayer, then give my palms a thorough shower to knock down the creepy-crawlies. Quicker than waiting for uptake from the roots. And I still sprinkle used grounds around the trunks.

[Jerry@TreeZoo]

Meg,

Mix in some soap, tobacco juice (or tobacco tea from used cigarettes) and some tobasco sauce and you've got a pretty potent organic pesticide.

[amazondk]

Jerry,

That sounds like a good mix. I did use some coffee mixed with a bit of dishwashing detergent sprayed on some plants to get rid of scale. I had forgotten about the tobacco. You can buy braided rope type tobacco here at the market. I have used this before as well. The normal coffee we drink here is about 4 times the strength that most non cuban americans drink.

dk

[phatmiata]

All this talk of coffee makes me thirsty, LOL.