Coffee grounds

Whats up RIU. I am gifted 50 lbs of used coffeed grounds weekly. My question is what is the best way to use this coffee grounds? I am a soil guy and have heard of amending my soil with it. Has anyone made liquid nutrients with coffee grounds? Is that even possible? I'm down to experiment if anyone has any good ideas, please let me know. Thanks for stopping by folks.

I've use it before, you have to be really careful, it can cause root rot very easily. I quit using it because of that reason. JMO

I've used coffee grounds as a soil amendment in my gardens over the years. I can't say I've noticed any definite good or bad effect on the plants. It's supposed to increase acidity. Seems to be decent food for compost worms.

compost the coffee grounds in a compost pile / bin or in a worm bin. Worms love coffee grounds.

Worms love it...and it's good for growing oyster mushrooms (if you run out of grow projects )

throw em all into the compost pile. its great stuff...never use raw coffee grounds in a soil mix.

I get so many coffee grounds, rabbit manure, and food scraps that my buddy and I are in the middle of setting up a composting facility in Lansing, Mi. Lots of continuous air flow worm bins and some industrial size tumbling composters. We'll be opening our service to the public this fall and will be selling our castings locally the following spring. So if you live in or near Mid-michigan be on the lookout for my posts about that, we're not gonna bother with packaging. Just come on down with a five gallon bucket and we'll load you up.

But enough about myself!

You can work some coffee grounds into your soil if it's like your soil bed outside, it will provide instant release phosphorus and potassium, along with slow release nitrogen. It's not really something you want to do for an instant fertilizer... But it's good to work into your garden bed at the end of fall when your done growing to enrich your bed for next year. I wouldn't work it into your pots tho...Unless you were doing no til gardening.

I just started a new experiment, I've taken some old soil, mixed in 10% coffee grounds, and now I'm gonna let them age for two months and see if they did anything to enrich the soil after.

Also as long as the grounds are dry and used grounds, they will not make your soil more acidic. The acidity of coffee grounds are easily water soluble...meaning it's washed away when they make coffee with it. So as long as it's dry, it's pH neutral.

And of course if you compost it it'll be guaranteed pH neutral.

And worms do seem to love them.

Thanks everyone for stopping by. From the majority, compost it is.

cassinfo said:

Thanks everyone for stopping by. From the majority, compost it is.

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50lbs a week is gonna require the mother of all leaf piles to match that.
shred the leaves and match one lb of grinds to 4 lbs of leaves

greasemonkeymann said:

50lbs a week is gonna require the mother of all leaf piles to match that.
shred the leaves and match one lb of grinds to 4 lbs of leaves

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Yeah ive started storing my grounds cause it's hard to find enough carbon this time of year. And I'm scared to over do it in my worm bins I'm worried it'll get too hot!

Rasta Roy said:

Yeah ive started storing my grounds cause it's hard to find enough carbon this time of year. And I'm scared to over do it in my worm bins I'm worried it'll get too hot!

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yea, I've found my worms don't like coffee as much as fruit, the grinds take like two or three weeks to be "eaten" and the fruit is gone in like 5-7 days, plus you can tell... the fruit mash is craaaawling with worms like hrs after I plop it in, but the grinds they are not to excited about.
If I recall correctly coffee grinds are about the macro value as steer manure
I've been using it in my soil for a couple yrs, but it's all been in the compost first, so it's not the same as a soil amendment.

Maybe you could get 50 lbs of eggshells to go with the coffee grounds. Then feed it to worms along with some green leftovers. That makes some supercharged worm castings.

You probably can go to where they are trimming out trees and mulching them and ask for a couple buckets? Some one, somewhere is usually removing that power line touching branch or the annoying gutter scraping branch.

bigskymtnguy said:

Maybe you could get 50 lbs of eggshells to go with the coffee grounds. Then feed it to worms along with some green leftovers. That makes some supercharged worm castings.

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shit... how much would THAT be
eggshells are so light, I bet 50lbs would be a metric fuck-load

bigskymtnguy said:

Maybe you could get 50 lbs of eggshells to go with the coffee grounds. Then feed it to worms along with some green leftovers. That makes some supercharged worm castings.

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Yep was gonna suggest this; worms seem to like the combo of eggshells & coffee grounds; add some dried plant matter & it is a worm smorgasbord