Wake Up and Smell the Coffee!

Wooden furniture looks great outside on your deck or patio. But wicked weather won’t be kind to your wooden furniture, so use this stain to keep nature’s wrath from wreaking havoc:

Mix 1 cup of ground coffee into 4 cups of water in a large saucepan and simmer on low heat for about an hour, adding more water as it evaporates. Let the mixture cool, strain out the coffee, and mix in ½ teaspoon of alum (available in the spice aisle of your supermarket) as a fixative. Then paint the stain onto the wood surface and let it dry. Repeat the process until you reach your desired shade of brown.

Here’s a few more ways coffee can help you perk up your great outdoors:

• Water your acid-loving plants like azaleas, rhododendrons, and strawberries with cold coffee.
• The caffeine in coffee increases the potency of any insecticide, so use it instead of plain water in any bug-killing soap spray.
• Pour coffee into puddles and other small bodies of standing water to kill mosquito larvae.
• Add coffee grounds (filters and all) to the holes when you plant acid-loving plants, like blueberries and evergreens.
• Add coffee grounds to lower the pH of your soil (that is, make it more acidic).
• To make tiny seeds—like those of lettuce and carrots—easier to sow, mix them with dried coffee grounds.
• Sprinkle some dried coffee grounds around plants to repel slugs and cutworms.