Give your compost pile a free boost

As most gardeners are intimately aware, a compost pile is a wonderful thing. You can feed it your food scraps — which would otherwise be garbage — and end up with beautiful black gold that will in turn feed your garden.

You can also feed coffee grounds to your compost pile. If you don’t have any (or enough), here’s an idea. My innovative husband, Jerry, thought up a way to find some more food for our compost. (He’s really fond of the compost. I think he’d name the worms if he could tell them apart.)

He sent out this e-mail to his coworkers:

Hello everyone,

This message is aimed primarily at the drip coffee drinkers in the office. I’d like to start collecting the used coffee grounds we go through every morning. The grounds make great composting material, and I have a worm bin in my backyard that will happily turn the grounds into good garden soil.

I’ve left a sealable bucket in the break room next to the coffee maker and the garbage can to collect the used grounds, filters and all. In fact, any vegetable matter (no meat!) can go in there if you want to be uber-hippie, but coffee grounds are the easiest to empty and probably the most abundant material we go through here. I have a couple buckets to rotate, so overfilling the bucket won’t be a problem.
So, the next time you make a fresh pot of coffee, please dump the grounds in the little compost bucket instead of the big garbage bucket. My worms and my garden will be happier for it, any maybe even get a little caffeine buzz too.

And if you’re a gardener and need some organic, locally-produced compost for your beds, let me know. If I have surplus compost material next Spring (which I suspect I will if this goes well), let me know and I’ll hook you up with some black gold.

Coffee grounds are great for compost, and other uses as well. Click here to learn more. Also, worms are fond of coffee grounds.

I can’t help but wonder if the worms around here are particularly fond of coffee due to the Seattle influence.