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Coffee and Nepenthes

R

ramdacc

I don't know who here has ever tried it but over a month ago I gave several different Nepenthes plants a single watering of straight black coffee I brewed in my regular coffee maker. The coffee "treatment" made a huge difference on every species I tried it on (rafflesiana, mirabilis var. echinostoma (6 different plants), x 'Maggie Jones' (one male one female), x 'Ali'i', x 'Roko', ventricosa x spectibilis, ventricosa x pectinata). The new growth is much larger than leaves produced immediately before the coffee treatment. The color change was nearly immediate, within a few days the old leaves turning a much darker green as well as new leaves, and the pitchers themselves have darkened up drastically. New pitchers are much larger than the previously produced pitchers. And growth speed has also accelerated over the weeks following the coffee treatment.

I've been using MaxSea 16-16-16 for a long time and I plan on continuing to do so. I've also used Better-gro Orchid Fertilizer (Urea Free). But a one-time watering of coffee has made a much bigger impact than MaxSea has ever made, and did not burn any of the plants I tested it on. Don't get me wrong, I think MaxSea is a great fertilizer to use at regular intervals and I'm going to continue using it the same way I have been. I don't think this coffee treatment needs to be done very often to have lasting effects. I also believe one the major benefits of using it is the acidifying effect it has on the soil, and therefore subsequent treatments may not have as much impact as the first.

I top-watered with just enough to have a little dripping out of the bottom of the pot. Two-three days later I watered like normal and have been since that time. Nothing else to it.

I highly recommend trying it.
 
Did you dilute the coffee at all, or no? Thanks
 
wow this sounds like really nice method of boosting growth. Also interested if it's better to dilute.
 
Not at all. I used Folgers Gourmet Supreme "Deep And Full Bodied", which is pretty much the blackest of black coffee I could find, and I mixed it at the exact label recommendations, 1 Tablespoon per 6 oz. I made 5 cups and used 6 & 2/3 tablespoons of grounds. I also used RO+DI water, of course.
 
Do you think that any coffee blend would work similarly?
 
This was my first and only attempt so I cannot say for sure, but I believe just about any coffee would work similarly, yes. Perhaps I would stay away from putting creamers and sugar in it though. :-D
 
haha of course. the plants will be all :ohno: if we added that.
 
I've used brewed coffee for a number of months now, about every 6 weeks or so put into the pots. So far many plants have a tendency to put on sudden growth spurts when this happens, and when combined with pitcher fertilization seems to do very well. There is a thread in here about the effects coffee has on seedling N. villosa too, and the results are definitely tangible.
 
i wonder if this has been applied to other plants? or only carnivores?
 
  • #10
Waw that's a coffee experiment, so many plants! Can you show some pictures how they looked before and now (or just now)?
Sounds really good, I'm gonna try it too :)
 
  • #12
wow so it can work on other plants too?
 
  • #13
I have always wondered if actually putting coffee grounds into the media would be beneficial at all?.....since coffee seems beneficial. I plan on making an experiment with it soon........i cut a vine i had into a few cuttings.......so once they root i will have some surplus nepenthes to 'experiment' with.

if it dies nbd just a vine cutting anyway.
 
  • #14
cpbobby said:
I have always wondered if actually putting coffee grounds into the media would be beneficial at all?.....since coffee seems beneficial. I plan on making an experiment with it soon........i cut a vine i had into a few cuttings.......so once they root i will have some surplus nepenthes to 'experiment' with.

if it dies nbd just a vine cutting anyway.
Click to expand...
just need to be careful that fungus doesn't also thrive
 
  • #15
will do.......not loading it up or anything no more than 10% ish of the media will have them in it.
 
  • #16
I wish someone would do a proper control study. You know; split a group of identical plants into two and treat half with coffee and the other half without......
I think the "sudden" dramatic results people see are often the result of normal growth behavior and the "leap" in size is attributable to other factors, like long-term good health and natural progression of leaf/pitcher sizes. People tend to see what they want to see.... ;-) I'm not saying coffee has no value, but from my own experience with it, I'd say its beneficial effects are minimal.
 
  • #17
The one thing I can say for sure is that the smaller plants that I used it on seemed to have the biggest immediate change. The medium sized plants I gave it to showed substantial gains in leaf size, trap size, color change, and growth rate when compared to the plants that did not get the treatment, but those changes were more drastic in the smaller plants. I have a few large plants that I used it on (a huge Miranda and a 4 growth point Maggie Jones) and didn't notice a huge difference, but still noticed some difference and I would definitely call the effects beneficial. Based on all the feedback I'm seeing on this forum and 2 others I'd say there's more to it than just people "seeing what they want to see".
 
  • #18
Whimgrinder said:
I wish someone would do a proper control study. You know; split a group of identical plants into two and treat half with coffee and the other half without......
I think the "sudden" dramatic results people see are often the result of normal growth behavior and the "leap" in size is attributable to other factors, like long-term good health and natural progression of leaf/pitcher sizes. People tend to see what they want to see.... ;-) I'm not saying coffee has no value, but from my own experience with it, I'd say its beneficial effects are minimal.
Click to expand...

I tend to agree with you. I think there needs to be a real study done before the benefits can be recognized as truth. At first I thought that coffee would lower the pH making some nutrients more available to the plant and would cause the growth (they after all do love acidic soils). However after some research I found that typically the pH of coffee and the medium we use for nepenthes tend to be around the same pH. Of course there is always the extremes, I'm just talking averages. For instance if you use a very dark roast the pH tends to be lower compared to a light roast. Also if your media for some reason has a higher pH, the combination of the two could yield a change in pH. But again, averages speaking, they should be around the same pH (4.0-5.0). Although who knows, maybe the benefits have nothing to do with pH?

I've tried myself to conduct my own experiment using some seedlings, but since they were hybrids I found quickly that hybrid differences were going to skew my results (before treatment there was already huge differences in vigor between each seedling), so I abandoned the experiment. I'm currently trying to getting cuttings off my maxima to do this experiment instead. I figure clones would yield more accurate results. We shall see if I get enough cuttings to take to do the experiment. I for one would really like to see it happen.
 
  • #19
i agree ,clones have got to be the best bet,seed grown plants show far too much variability ,you would need a larger number of seed grown plants for the experiment and take an average ,but clones have got to be better,i personally thought coffee was beneficial to my plants,but that said an experiment would be a great idea,we need someone with good growing conditions and plenty of plants,Paul?afraid my conditions are rubbish and my plants spend half the time sulking
 
  • #20
Hey guys, I am glad I joined this forum because I may be able to shed some light on this coffee phenomenon.

I am taking a Plant Physiology course in college right now and today we went over plant hormones, and skimmed over one particular part of information related to a chemical present in coffee that has large effects on plant hormones - in particular Auxins (IAA and related compounds).

The information I am about to share with you really makes sense to me on why we see good growth results when we water our plants with coffee. It all stems from the specific chemicals produced by coffee plants that are present in coffee. Particularly the compound called Caffeic acid. Now it may be found in all plants, but I believe it is present in higher concentrations in coffee beans. It's effects on plants has been described to be almost like a hormone. A plant can actually intake this chemical through its tissues so when you water your plants or spray them with Caffeic acid, it is going to have similar effect.

So what makes Caffeic acid so special? aside from being a normal part of plants' various metabolic pathways, it is actually directly related to the plants' auxin hormone. Or rather the auxins' regulation.

So as we all know auxins are plant hormones that have a role in a huge amount of plant processes including growth, flowering, in this case also pitcher formation since it is a form of growth, and many many other things. Auxins do not act alone. for example, auxins are involved in flowering by interaction with other hormones such as ethylene.

Plants have numerous systems of auxin regulation. one of these is permanent auxin degradation by the IAA oxydase enzyme (this is more or less a hypothetical enzyme that is very recently described in the field of plant phys). IAA oxydase and similar enzymes are responsible for taking IAA and other forms of auxins and degrading them into non-active compounds. What does this mean for the plant? A plant with more IAA oxydase will remove most of its active Auxin from it's system and will show stunting and very little growth since auxin is so vital in growth.

Now, here is where Caffeic acid comes in. Caffeic acid - due to its diphenol arrangement acts as a competitive inhibitor of the IAA oxidase enzyme. it binds to the enzyme instead of IAA and blocks the reaction of IAA degradation. When we water our plant with Coffee, we are putting a lot of Caffeic acid into the substrate, which the plants can absorb. This acid then travels throughout the plant, inhibits a lot of the IAA oxydase found in our plants, which as a result increases the concentrations of IAA in our plants (since much less of the IAA is now being degraded by IAA oxydase). It is important to note that the degradation of IAA and similar auxins via IAA oxydase is a normal process that all plants are doing in order to regulate growth (ie seasonal growth spurts). By adding caffeic acid, you are artificially modifying the plants' normal hormonal actions. This stimulates growth because auxins are not being degraded as much and are acting on the plant.

It would then make sense to get more growth out of a plant that has been watered with coffee! by adding coffee we are essentially helping the plant "obtain" more Auxin hormones for the better growth that we often see. Auxin hormones are responsible for a good amount of the growth!

What do you guys think about this as being a possible explanation? You can read about this in most plant physiology textbooks available at local libraries if you are interested. This information is mentioned in the section on Auxin hormones in any textbook.
 
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