You know that feeling when you have found an
amazing, tucked-away restaurant but you worry if you tell anyone about it, it
won’t be so secret anymore. That is how I feel about this secret, but since I
like you all so much, here it goes...
Coffee grounds and leaves make magic. They are a
match made in heaven. I am not talking about the small amount of grounds you
create with your home coffee pot. To really make an impact, you need to source
your grounds from places that make enough coffee to caffeinate hundreds of
people a day.
Your friendly neighborhood coffee house.
Recently, a friend of mine made a trip to a
Starbucks for her daily sweet coffee fix and asked if they had any used coffee
grounds. Instead of the usual neat package of grounds, they gave her a huge
garbage bag full. Luckily for me, she was willing to share and dropped off half
the bag for my leaf bins.
I’ve been thinking about “cheating” with my leaf
compost bins for a few months now. I have mostly oak leaves and while they are
showing a steady progression, I want to speed it up.
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Coffee grounds just begging to meet up with my leaves. |
Bulk coffee grounds add a condensed punch of nitrogen to very carbon heavy leaf bins and will speed up decomposition of the
leaves. I layered the grounds in one leaf bin with leaves I moved from a
smaller bin. Amazingly, there were enough grounds to also spread on my other
leaf bin. As a side bonus, now my leaf bins smell like delicious coffee.
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I added the grounds in layers with my leaves and weeds. |
So, next time you want to give your leaf bin
compost a boost, stop by your local coffee shop and politely ask it they have
any used grounds they could give you. Just save some for me, please. J