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Ground for Ground: Put your coffee back into the earth
Coffee grounds are better than gold in the garden. One Australian man got fed up with all the wasted grounds and started a movement to add them to the soil.
Sun, Aug 22 2010 at 4:46 PM
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Photo: How can I recycle this/Flickr
The world drinks a lot of coffee — over a billion pounds a year. After all those cups of coffee, espresso, and lattes have been poured, there's a veritable mountain of grounds left behind. The vast majority of it gets tossed into the waste bin and hauled off to the dump.
Shane Genziuk of Victoria, Australia, thinks we could be doing something better with all those grounds, so he started a local initiative called Ground for Ground which works with coffee shops to make their grounds available for people to use in their gardens and compost heaps.
Genziuk has collected around 1,874 pounds of coffee grounds since March of this year from coffee shops near his home, using it in his compost bin, around fruit trees, in raised garden beds, and as gifts to families and neighbors to use on their lawns and gardens.
On his personal blog, Genziuk shares a few of the ways coffee grounds are good to have around the garden:
• Coffee is a great source of nitrogen, a much needed plant fertilizer. The nitrogen in coffee is a kind that needs to break down in the soil before being released so it ends up feeding a slow and steady drip of fertilizer to your plants.
• The nitrogen in coffee nicely balances the addition of "brown" materials (leaves, straw and cardboard) in a compost heap.
• In addition to nitrogen, coffee grounds also contain magnesium and copper in just the right amounts to be beneficial to your plants.
• Coffee grounds act as an effective repellent against slugs, snails, ants and cats.
• Earth worms LOVE coffee grounds.
Starbucks started a similar program in 1995 called Grounds for Your Garden that offers customers free five-pound bags of used grounds to take home.
To learn more about Ground to Ground, you can visit the website and/or contact Shane Genziuk via e-mail at shanegenziuk@gmail.com.
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Rukiya Belagam wont drink the stuff and Rukiya Belagam wont be putting this in her yard.
What a crazy idea and it sounds like it would smell bad as well.
But that being said you gotta keep trying and thinking of new things!
Rukiya Belagam
Enter your comments
I have been using coffee grounds in my garden and into my compost. Does anyone know if it makes a difference if your plant is more alkaline or acid based? or can coffee grounds be put wherever your little heart desires?
Unless you are using huge quantities, it is not going to make a great difference for the plant, unless it is very dependant on alkaline soil. Most of the acid is washed out of the bean during the brewing phase, and what we put into the garden is only slightly acidic. Even then, it quickly breaks down to leave you with something that is fairly balanced - not too high or low. Just right!
http://shanegenziuk.wordpress.com/category/ground-to-ground/
My grandmother always put the coffee grounds on the garden.
and it makes a complete fertilizer. The snails REALLY don't like this mix.
and it makes a complete fertilizer. The snails REALLY don't like this mix.
Coffee consumption by your average American used to be a 6-ounce cup once a day. We all know what we consume today--and it's much more than 6 ounces. I compost all of my grounds at home, and I pick up the Starbuck's grounds when it's convenient. Since I almost never buy coffee out, though, it's not that often. I wish we had a nationwide composting program like some cities have begun.
http://ozarkhomesteader.wordpress.com/