The Coffee Ground Spray People Use To Get Rid Of Squash Bugs (But Is It The Best?)

Squash bugs can be a concerning sight in a home garden, especially if you've got young plants around. These insects primarily target squash and pumpkins (hence their name) and can kill young plants by sucking out the sap in their leaves. If you're noticing yellowish spots on your plants and wilting leaves, you might be a victim of squash bugs — but that doesn't mean your garden is doomed. Coffee grounds are a secret ingredient for bountiful gardens and can help you get rid of these pests. Plus, they benefit the rest of your garden, making them a great all-around solution for squash bugs compared to other popular choices. It may be one of the best ways to eradicate squash bugs, and it's at least as effective as other methods.

Use coffee grounds on your plants by boiling 2 tablespoons of coffee grounds with 2 cups of water, letting the mixture cool, and then funneling it into a spray bottle. Cover both sides of each leaf and re-spray if it rains. Giving your garden this caffeine spritz makes it smell like coffee, a scent that squash bugs despise, and might be an added benefit to all coffee lovers. Coffee grounds also increase nitrogen in soil, so you can plant with leftover grounds for a similar deterrent effect while boosting soil quality. Just be sure to avoid going near plants in your home that don't like coffee grounds as a fertilizer, which is any houseplant or any vegetable that doesn't need nitrogen-heavy soil.

Many of the other products used to control squash bugs don't actually target the adult bugs, they simply slow the population growth by targeting young nymphs. This is the case for insecticides and neem oil. If you implement those solutions, you'll have to manually kill the adult squash bugs, which is far less pleasant than simply deterring them from the area. Some insecticides can also be dangerous to humans and pets, so they aren't necessarily the best choice for a squash bug problem that tends to threaten new growth. 

You can also repel squash bugs from your garden with mint because the bugs dislike the smell. They especially despite catnip, which is part of the mint family. Since catnip and coffee grounds both use smell deterrents, they are likely to be equally effective as natural pest control, but it's more labor to plant and maintain an entire new herb in your garden than it is to simply incorporate the coffee ground spray into your routine. With this method, you're likely using something you already have in your cabinet, making it a low-cost and low-risk solution to keeping your vegetable plants thriving.