Agreed! Until our horses both died in 2020, every day got a wheelbarrow of mixed horse manure and pine shavings (including in particular those that were urine-soaked) added to the vegetable garden, first as mulch, and then the following spring, all roro-tilled into the soils. The garden produced like gangbusters, and even in dry times the soil remained moist!
I run a small independent coffee shop in a rural community. We have people who want coffee grounds bring in a 5 gallon bucket with their name and number on it. We keep them lined up in rotation in the back hallway and call the customer when their bucket in full and ready to go. Also I get lots of produce from happy farmers.
I was one of those taking coffee grounds from Justin Davis when preparing my raised keyhole garden. Imagine my surprise seeing his comment when I was on a youtube stroll!
I used empty toilet paper rolls to segregate the seeds at planting, and keep track of where they’re supposed to grow. (Helps me remember where I planted them!) I didn’t realize that the cardboard decomposition was good for the soil, too. I guess that explains why I got so many cucumbers 🥒 this year.😊
Thank you for this. I add my coffee grounds with the unbleached filter paper to the blueberry bed to maintain soil acidity. I no longer feel lazy for not removing the grounds from the filters. 😊
It's been my understanding that spent coffee grounds don't add to the acidity as it all goes into the coffee. I've ground a bunch of beans and added fresh grounds to my blueberries but I've no real way, besides a pH tester, to tell if it makes a difference either way.
Whatever you haven't figured out yet, you will figure out in short order. Videos like these really add to the knowledgw base of the gardening world.Thanks for an excellent video! Subscribed = ✓
I use wood chips, kitchen scraps, leaves, paper shreds, and coffee grounds. When I dig up the pile in the spring, my pile is full of worms. This past spring I took compost, just made it the top layer of a raised bed where I planted and grew squash and had the best squash harvest ever.
I have found that Costco is a great source of cardboard. They use huge sheets on their pallets...no tape and label stripping! And they shred very easy!
haha...funny I was just thinking of about this as I use these sheets as a tarp when laying out my compost but then after I use them and they get too wet I throw them in the city compost but if I have a lot of residue compost on them I shred and add back to my composter.
When I started adding coffee grounds to my compost I found a football size clump of worms and when I separated them there was the ball of coffee grounds in the middle. Shiniest and fastest worms I have ever seen. They actually glowed.
WOW!!🐛💫🤩 I used to put in my compost and soil. I wasn't sure if I should use it with dogs and cats around. I recently read that it's great for putting in water and wiping it on your pets and leaving on for a few minutes then wash off. It works as a natural bug repellent... Thank you for your wonderful help tips! I've been missing the great results from having the worm castings in my soil☺
Makes total sense. I think that sometimes we forget that coffee grounds are a green additive and the cardboard is a brown additive. I am just about to liberate my first compost where I used some of the coffee grounds I get from a coffee shop for free. You are the first person who I have seen do something similar to me. I use green plastic mesh in a cylinder in various places in the garden, so I always have compost near my three major growing zones.
In simpler terms diversify your amendments to either type of compost system. If you look at nature what you see id diversification of materials dropped to the soil level during the year. What you are doing with any form of compost or mulch is aiding nature in the process your reward is that you speed it up. If the excess is green Nature lets it leach and bleach turning it brown. If the excess is brown the lichens and microbes us it as fuel and convert it to base nutrients for use. Sheet composting (organic mulches) use a combination of the two to make the nutrients available to the plants (Back to Eden method)
That study about the decrease of earthworms is pretty interesting because I've kinda found the opposite. I live in the Pacific Northwest with dry summers and very wet winters. I save my grounds into a quart yogurt container and every few days I dump them over the side of my deck onto a dedicated coffee ground pile, where they sit undisturbed. Underneath that pile is my typical PNW heavy clay loam soil, not a compost-rich garden bed. If I disturb that coffee ground pile at all during the wet season, I find it's chock full of red wrigglers that somehow found their way to that pile. When it gets dry and hot they disappear. I'm wondering what's different about my environment from a compost pile that would make such a difference.
Don't exagerate with the egg shells. They are mineral, worms can't use them in any way, they add a lot of calcium to the soil, which some plants don't tolerate well. They also influence pH - too many egg shells and your compost/soil will become alkaline.
I put coffee grounds and eggshells in a pan in my oven, where they get toasted when I bake something. I then process them through my old Waring blender. This makes a great addition to potting soil or garden soil.
@666toy soldier, good lord how much time, energy and money did you expend putting those ingredients into your electron gobbling appliances? This is hardly the goal of composting! 🤷🏻♂️
Exactly! Some of live in colder climates and dont use worm composting and need to speed up the decomposing process by baking the eggs shells, grinding things, and other ways to speed up the process.
@@kathyscott4671 I made a winter garden here in the high desert where it gets too cold for regular gardening. I buried my compost materials about 2 feet down in the center of my 6' x 6' covered garden. I monitored the ground temperature in the buried pile while the plants were growing. It got up to 114 degrees Fahrenheit. So, I still say that this can all be done naturally without unnecessary work and added CO$T of electricity.
A nicely edited, totally watchable, and very useful video! I really appreciated your English, which is correct and precise throughout, as well. This is intelligent, but simple. Good luck to you!
Thanks for a helpful reminder. I am pretty sure I had heard this long ago, but did not live in the country where I could garden for 5+ years and I sort of forgot. We just moved back to the country and I have been saving all my coffee grounds, and my husband and I drink a lot of coffee, like 2-3 cups a day each minimum.
Thanks for the informational video. I have and do use my coffee grounds, combined with the shredded unbleached brown paper coffee filters, spent tea and chai tea bags, and crumbled egg shells. I simply dump all in a plastic container in my garage, then add to garden raised beds when the container is full. My plots are full of happy earthworms year round. I remember when I first started to sue this compost, along with the Splendid Increase of Taste and Harvesting of my veggies, especially sweetens the tomatoes and bell peppers. Along with other home made fertilizers, made from pulled plants and liquid calcium from egg shells and water sitting; I purchase Zero Commercial Fertilizers. My pest and disease control treatments are also made with organic, around the home ingredients. Such a Noticeable, Improved Taste over store bought wanna-be veggies! This video shows how recycling of your grinds and additives are so good for your garden.
The Starbucks inside the Target my wife used to go by in Durham, NC would bag the used grounds in 5 pound bags and put them in a basket for anyone to take near their register.
We add our coffee grounds in the brown, not the bleached white ones, coffee filter that the grounds are in. Our compost is alive with earthworms. Thanks for the info., and cardboard will be used now as well. ☺️
Thanks for the tip! I got a little nervous because I use coffee grounds in my worm compost hotel, ground compost stop and in my garden compost tumbler. But I always use cardboard and leaves. Wiping my head from relief. 😂. My worms are happy!!
The coffee grounds are nearly neutral. The worms do benefit from the mixture but I haven't found them to die from too much of a good thing. They live in the bottom of my pile of coffee grounds. Too much water and heat can kill them, though.
Nice job Andrew, I've been Vermicomposting since 2009 in a Can-O-Worms. I started a RUclips channel in 2020. It started out as a garden channel and has evolved into a combination garden/worm/life. I do love my worms and have 6 bins at this point. Thanks for the suggestion on going to Starbucks 👩🌾👍
@@eulabergado6927 mine have survived the winter but I am in CA so the temp doesn't drop to freezing for long periods. I would cover my bins in clear plastic during the rain to solar heat the bins. Leave room for air by placing a couple of 5 gal buckets at the corner between bins to tent the plastic. I also did lower the soil moisture ratio making it a bit drier during higher humidity periods. They seemed happy and were thriving even in winter but again winter is not weeks of freezing where Im at.
There are 6 Starbucks within a ten minutes drive from my formerly low organic matter soil garden spot. Two of them put only coffee grounds in green bins. Often they will contain perhaps 1,000 pounds of old grounds each. Score! Was able to grow monster okra, squash, pepper and potato crops the second year of composting.
Shredded paper works as well as cardboard does so does saw dust, grass clippings or anything with a high cellulose content and high surface areas to volume ratio. The cellulose absorbs some of the residual caffeine.
Will have to try adding them to the compost. I HAVE been using them as mulch in a specific garden area - but here in Maine, they have NOT molded and decomposed, but just accumulated as a kind of brown organic sand on the soil surface. We apparently don't have the right mold - at least at our farm - to get them to decompose. The only way I can get that process even started at all is to admix bread crumbs and other readily-decaying materials that will start a mold culture. We also don't have to worry that much about the earthworms here, either. None of those we have are native - not one - and in some areas, they're destroying the leaf litter layer in the forests. Took me a while to realize the mantra "earthworms are great for the garden!" isn't always true! Plus, now we have the "Chinese jumping worms," which are in some areas wreaking environmental havoc.
earthworms are still native to North America. In Fact maine has had native worms before the populations died out during the last interglacial. They immediately rehabitated the region and not even all worms were killes during the ice age many nemotodes can survive freeze.
@@infernaldaedra ... Native earthworms in North America, fine. But not in Maine. (And an Interglacial is the time period BETWEEN major glacial events.) Sorry, but when you're considering Maine, there's NO evidence for earthworms in the fossil record. North America has been glaciated some 20-25 times in the last 2.5 million years, and there is NO evidence for earthworms in that time interval - because there are virtually no known DEPOSITS in Maine from before maybe 16,000 years ago (and I've worked on two of those four known older sites). You're operating entirely from speculation. ALL earthworms now found in "the wilds" of Maine are introduced - from nursery stock, deliberate introductions, or fishing bait turned loose at the end of the day. And Nematodes are no more earthworms than snakes are.
This winter, we are using our hugelkultur garden as a compost heap....I will definitely start using coffee grounds (a trip to StarBucks might help) and shredded cardboard... should be a neat experiment.
I was using coffee ground to fertilize some potted plants and it would form a hard crust on the top of the soil in the pots and make it hard for water to soak in. I had a bunch of free sawdust I had obtained so I just threw some sawdust on top of the grounds and the water was able to soak in again which softened the crust, dissolving it completely and the plants thrived and were finally able to utilize the nutrients from the coffee grounds. If you are throwing out stale, un-brewed coffee grounds, or using conifer sawdust, you might want to add some kind of agricultural lime to the mix as well.
I found the coffee was upsetting my worm farm, so I created a whole new bin just for coffee grounds and then put a handful of worms in, to see how they would go, whether they would evolve to suit their environment. But I also added some cardboard and hessian bags or things like that. And they've been there seemingly happy for years. But I also tend to keep my coffee moist in plastic bags for a few weeks to months before I add into the bins, I think this tends to let mould do the first part of the breakdown - and I think it may eradicate some of the nasty chemicals.
I love the idea of using industrial cardboard made from who knows what kind of source materials...... held together with glues and binders, probably some latex like your paper towels..... nice
Great information. Luckily I already do that. I drink a five cup pot a day and I include not only the grounds but also the paper filter. Cardboard is so plentiful and free. We have a DOLLAR GENERAL CLOSE BY AND THEY USE TONS OF IT. Sorry for the caps. Havagudun bud and thanks.
Wow great info! I’m a first time viewer and already use my coffee grounds (and sometimes Starbucks too), but I’ve been putting them directly on the soil where I have my plants (I mostly container-grow). But I’m starting a small compost area in my backyard so this video is right on time 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽
I just throw the paper filters in with the coffee grounds...worms seem to love the paper filters....also you know what I do in summer? I go to places where people are throwing out the corn husks and the strings of the husks...my worms love that. Apparently you can boil that corn silk too and use it as a blood sugar regulator and you know what's crazy. Some people must have caught on because I saw some people selling the stuff.
I'm in chicago and I asked a couple coffee joints for grounds and they looked puzzled. After a couple other requests I found a dunkin that has been giving me more than I could imagine. I could barely lift the bags.
does chicago have a big drug addict problem? I ask because I am in Vancouver, BC and I used to be part of a community garden and I used to walk over to the Starbucks and collect their bags that were their old coffee grounds that they would put in the used up bean bags and go and dump those in my garden. One day I went and they stopped handing out those bags because some junkies were taking them and selling them to people at discounted prices pretending they had bought the beans and just needed the money. So they told people to bring their own container but they had some junkies manage to get other bags and do same thing so they didn't want to do it unless they knew for sure it was for gardening so then I started walking over there with a wheelbarrow and would tell them they could come with me or come visit me. They let me take them but I am wondering if these confused places are just scared of situations like these happening. Don't get me wrong. Drug addicts I have no issue with and I worked alongside a number of addicts in the garden who gardened to keep sober but I am looking at how businesses might have reasons why they don't want to do things....and of course they just might not understand the concept that one mans garbage is anothers treasure.
I have never had problems with my vermicomposter - nice healthy worm population. I think the reason is that I just add my paper coffee filters with residual grounds after I shake out the excess grounds into another pail. This I empty into my other aerated compost binds with the kitchen and garden waste. Sometimes I do add carbon when I think I am low on carbon in the mix.
I agree with you. I've kept a 3 tier worm bin since 2008. We drink 16 cups/daily. I put in the grounds, filter, banana peel and strawberry tops 7 days/week. I can't tell if it is slowing them down, but I have to clean them out once a month. I also had ground Eggshells for grit and toilet paper and paper towel roll. I think the combination works for me.
Thanks so much! Great video, so I looked up earthworms, Wikipedia says an 'terrestrial invertebrate'. For some reason I thought that maybe the die off of the worms, could be the lack of pumpkin spice latte? Thanks again, I will save my coffee grounds for sure. Will subscribe now.
I use to do this. Then I started growing mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, and use the coffee and cardboard as the growing substrate. After I get the mushrooms, I crumble what is left and add it to the garden
Tell me more! Do you use liquid culture, sawdust spawn, or what? Where do you get your cultures? Do you sterilize or pasteurize your substrate? Would love to hear your success stories with mushroom cultivation.
I started about this time last year, during the lock down. I did a Google search on the easiest mushrooms to grow and they all came up with oyster mushrooms. I got an oyster mushroom growing kit from Amazon. And did another Google search on how to propagate mushrooms and went with the stem butt method. It seemed the easiest for me to start with. When I harvested the first mushrooms I loosely chopped the stems. Then boiled some cardboard (it was the box the mushrooms arrived in) taking care to remove the peaces with ink and glue. When it had cooled down I squeezed out the excess water and placed it in an airtight container, a old ice cream container, and layed the stem butts with the cardboard. I didn't expect anything to happen. Within a few days the stem butts were fuzzy, and in about 3 weeks had completely colonised the cardboard. I drink 2 or 3 French presses of coffee a day. I had saved those in the freezer, in another ice cream container. When the container was full I placed the coffee in a pan, along with chopped up cardboard, a tablespoon of sugar and some ground eggshells. Boiled it for 15 minutes or so, and when it was cool added the colonised cardboard (all in another container). And kept it moist for a few weeks, until it was like candyfloss, then took the lid off, sprayed it a few times a day and in a few days the pins started to appear
Great video! I think I heard that worms like coffee grounds. Apparently, they do not. This is good to know. I have a mistrust of cardboard, because I am worried about glues, chemicals, whatever… We try to stay away from toxins as much as possible. However, I really like the idea of mixing grounds with leaves. I add coffee grounds directly to our garden beds, our planter, and to our compost pile. Great reminder for me to make a connection with coffee businesses to try to get some of those spent grounds. Thank you!
I mix rotten hay, leaves, veggie scraps from the grocery store and old manure to my compost along with coffee grounds, but I've found, at the bottom of my huge pile of coffee grounds that I collect over the winter, that my red wigglers are doing quite well if not in the numbers in my piles. My piles are on the ground with three layers of sheet plastic and hay in-between as well as a few feet of snow on top. When I open the oldest one up on Groundhog day to start my tomato and pepper plants. the wigglers are on the surface and very active. Before using the plastic and hay layers, the worms moved into the soil to just make it through the winter. N Idaho. -20 degrees F
So when you add the rotten hay, is this hay that you know hasn’t been sprayed with anything or GMO type etc.? The reason that I ask is because I am noticing a lot of problems with hay that has been sprayed, absolutely decimating gardens. So just made me wonder, if you are using just whatever hay you find and it’s still working just great? Thx!
@@evelyny7037 I do ask if any herbicide has been used. So far, none that I've found have been sprayed. My neighbor used some that had been sprayed and it took years to come back from it.
Great video! Will definitely be breaking down those Amazon boxes I have waiting to be put out with recycling and throw them in the backyard to be weathered, then added to compost pile and other flower beds for the winter.
Have you tried composting only coffee grounds with some 10 or 20 percent normal garden soil? I compost tea grounds with clay and it's ready in a month to use.
The study you referenced wasn't detailed to know for sure, but I bet the probelm could also have been solved by simply feeding the worms correctly... by placing all new food in a corner which isolates the effects of food decomposition to that corner and doesn't contaminate the entire worm bed. This way, when the worms prefer a more pH neutral environment, they can retreat to their own bedding. In fact, I would say my recommendation is the only sure way of avoiding a worm herd killing. You can mix more carbon into the food as you recommend but it's hard to specify the exact proportions.
I have a bin that I top up with cardboard, coffee ground (I have a coffee shot so lots of it) , egg shells , vegetable scraps ... a french study revealed that for the coffee to be good for your garden , it has to be 9 months old ... if it’s too young , not mature enough , it doesn’t do much good . So I keep that coffee mix in a separate composter.
Compost attracts Black Soldier Fly larvae (Hermetia Illucens) which quickly devour the coffee grounds in your compost. Don't be alarmed! They mutate into Black Soldier Flies which do not have any moving mouth parts. The Black Soldier Fly larvae are also very nutritious and can be feed to you chickens if you have them or to the fish in your pond.
I have loads of BSF larvae in my compost bin and they avoid the grounds along with the citrus. I suppose if there was nothing else in the bin they might eat the grounds, but I haven't seen that yet. Plus, I have a pile of grounds composting separately from the bin and no BSF larvae have ever appeared in it. In fact, grounds seem to deter all sorts of insects including vermin. I think the smell must repel them. There is probably still a small amount of caffeine left in them which is a natural insect repellent. Even though they are considered a green, they are not nearly as high in N as grass clippings or kitchen scraps because the compost piles using just grounds as the green source don't heat up nearly as much. None of this stops me from collecting grounds though from my local SB's. Grounds are a year round source of greens unlike other sources which is crucial because I always have an overabundance of browns and I appreciate their repellent properties not just in the compost but the garden as well.
I compost with coffee grounds, kitchen waste, chicken waste in pine shavings and mulched leaves. The bsfl break down the kitchen waste and chicken waste. It makes a great soil and the bsfl makes a great healthy treat for the chooks. And if you want to attract the bsf to your compost, coffee grounds and banana peels will do it.
Good timing! I actually had planned to add a bag of coffee grounds to my 'tumbler' compost bin tomorrow so I will be sure to add plenty of cardboard with it. I would have been upset if I had accidently killed all my worms if I had added only the grounds.
I use coffee grounds for when im going on a fishing trip , just replace the night crawers from the dirt they come in and replace with coffee grounds , two weeks before fishing trip , you will have the biggest crawers you have ever used.😊
The University of Arizona, Extension Service found that earth worms do not like coffee grounds, initially. The coffee grounds have to be in the soil for a number of months in which time the soil microbiome changes the chemical composition of the coffee grounds. After a few months earth works will consume the coffee grounds. Coffee grounds provide nitrogen but very little potassium and phosphate.
I just started a compost pile last summer and have been throwing in grounds regularly. As soon as all the snow melts, I will be sure to add the shredded cardboard. Good information, thanks!!
I've learned to compost with worms in N Idaho with cold winters. To keeps the pile warm, put iton the ground with triple insulated layers of hay and sheet plastic. Without the insulation, the worms went into the ground to survive, but now I'll get potting soil ready to go with worms on the surface of the pile the end of January to start my peppers. Give them plenty of greens to get through the fall and winter. I haven't used cardboard but spoiled hay free on Craig's list works well and has more nutrients.
I watch a video of an study of 3 kinds of worms and coffee grounds and with non coffee grounds and study shown slower breeding of worms in coffee grounds added to worm bins?
there are places to get free sawdust too. I bet that would work as well. I have really dense dirt in my front strip by the street. I am trying an experiment. I am adding coffee, leaves, sawdust and my camilia flowers that dropped. I read that worms do well if they have a good mix of stuff above ground... so I'll see
My worm population are going gang busters and I give them all our coffee grounds. I may not have noticed the affect because I also put into the kitchen pot toilet rolls, torn mail, tissues, paper napkins and sometimes small bits of cardboard. Kitchen scraps the chickens can’t eat too. I must have been automatically balancing it for them.
Thanks for the info! For my worms, I use coconut peat, ground egg shells and coffee grounds, and now thanks to this video, shredded cardboard. Is this OK and what else am I missing? And in what proportions should they all be?
Just add a paper layer in your Kitchen Pail, then add a layer each time the one below is covered. This gives a good mix of vege waste, coffee grounds and paper material. Also, make sure you have drained the Coffee grounds of excess water. I put then is a separate container to let them settle, then drain the excess liquid.
Wood Chips Are Great For The Garden, But Don't Compost THIS Kind! ► ruclips.net/video/AhcxRB-s-Fc/видео.html
Agreed! Until our horses both died in 2020, every day got a wheelbarrow of mixed horse manure and pine shavings (including in particular those that were urine-soaked) added to the vegetable garden, first as mulch, and then the following spring, all roro-tilled into the soils. The garden produced like gangbusters, and even in dry times the soil remained moist!
I like your sincerity. There are better systems for this emergency if you want learn them.
I consult.
#asiflifeonEarthMatters
I run a small independent coffee shop in a rural community. We have people who want coffee grounds bring in a 5 gallon bucket with their name and number on it. We keep them lined up in rotation in the back hallway and call the customer when their bucket in full and ready to go. Also I get lots of produce from happy farmers.
great comment Justin. you made my day! I should see if my local coffee shop will do that with me.
Fantastic, if every coffee shop did this, imagine the amount of fertile soil that would be created!
I was one of those taking coffee grounds from Justin Davis when preparing my raised keyhole garden. Imagine my surprise seeing his comment when I was on a youtube stroll!
@@dakotahflannery798 that's awesome, small world of us composters! 😀
@@stevoblevo most Starbucks stores gives the used grounds away daily
I used empty toilet paper rolls to segregate the seeds at planting, and keep track of where they’re supposed to grow. (Helps me remember where I planted them!) I didn’t realize that the cardboard decomposition was good for the soil, too. I guess that explains why I got so many cucumbers 🥒 this year.😊
I much with shredded paper. Not particularly attractive but not awful and when it’s turned over in the fall the earthworms eat it!
that's a really cool idea, thanks for sharing that!
Cucumbers produce ridiculous growing in anything
Moldy wood pulp
@@fattoria_di_bastoniI love that look personally.
Thank you for this. I add my coffee grounds with the unbleached filter paper to the blueberry bed to maintain soil acidity. I no longer feel lazy for not removing the grounds from the filters. 😊
I use the filters too, mostly because I dump them with the grounds into the kitchen container for bits when I’m only half awake!
It's been my understanding that spent coffee grounds don't add to the acidity as it all goes into the coffee. I've ground a bunch of beans and added fresh grounds to my blueberries but I've no real way, besides a pH tester, to tell if it makes a difference either way.
Whatever you haven't figured out yet, you will figure out in short order. Videos like these really add to the knowledgw base of the gardening world.Thanks for an excellent video! Subscribed = ✓
I use wood chips, kitchen scraps, leaves, paper shreds, and coffee grounds. When I dig up the pile in the spring, my pile is full of worms. This past spring I took compost, just made it the top layer of a raised bed where I planted and grew squash and had the best squash harvest ever.
There's small coffe factory in front of my store , today I asked for the coffee grounds that they usually throw away.
I have found that Costco is a great source of cardboard. They use huge sheets on their pallets...no tape and label stripping! And they shred very easy!
great tip, thanks!
Furniture stores have lots of it and they are getting nothing for it recycling now.
Looks like we are after the same sheets of carboard from Costco! I hope to visit my local branch before you will take them all! 😀
haha...funny I was just thinking of about this as I use these sheets as a tarp when laying out my compost but then after I use them and they get too wet I throw them in the city compost but if I have a lot of residue compost on them I shred and add back to my composter.
Those big sheets would be great to lay down and then put wood chips on. It would suppress weeds nicely. I need to ask for them.
When I started adding coffee grounds to my compost I found a football size clump of worms and when I separated them there was the ball of coffee grounds in the middle. Shiniest and fastest worms I have ever seen. They actually glowed.
"Mom, grandpa is telling his worm story again" 😁
@@GoGreenCompost 😂❤️
I have red wigglers on the bottom of my pile of coffee grounds I collect over the winter before I make my piles.
WOW!!🐛💫🤩 I used to put in my compost and soil. I wasn't sure if I should use it with dogs and cats around. I recently read that it's great for putting in water and wiping it on your pets and leaving on for a few minutes then wash off. It works as a natural bug repellent... Thank you for your wonderful help tips! I've been missing the great results from having the worm castings in my soil☺
You turned them caffeine junkies!
Thank you (from Australia) for these tips!
You can also add your coffee filter if it is unbleached natural fiber. Works when you don't have cardboard.
Oh yes definitely throw the filters in too!
Good idea!!
Mmyeah good idea good idea
@@GoGreenCompost But also to oblige the slow-down process so it doesn't damage the worms as much? :)
I have been throwing in my coffee filters for years and I don't think they are unbleached and my worms love them and are fine.
Makes total sense. I think that sometimes we forget that coffee grounds are a green additive and the cardboard is a brown additive. I am just about to liberate my first compost where I used some of the coffee grounds I get from a coffee shop for free. You are the first person who I have seen do something similar to me. I use green plastic mesh in a cylinder in various places in the garden, so I always have compost near my three major growing zones.
Sure wished I lived near you -I’m tired of emptying K-pods.😅
@@alliecat9607 no Starbucks near by?
thanks, I've always used coffee grounds and now I'm gonna mix it with cardboard.
Great tips... thanks. I live near a Starbucks and drink coffee. Love my red wigglers and don't want to harm them.
In simpler terms diversify your amendments to either type of compost system. If you look at nature what you see id diversification of materials dropped to the soil level during the year. What you are doing with any form of compost or mulch is aiding nature in the process your reward is that you speed it up.
If the excess is green Nature lets it leach and bleach turning it brown. If the excess is brown the lichens and microbes us it as fuel and convert it to base nutrients for use. Sheet composting (organic mulches) use a combination of the two to make the nutrients available to the plants (Back to Eden method)
That study about the decrease of earthworms is pretty interesting because I've kinda found the opposite. I live in the Pacific Northwest with dry summers and very wet winters. I save my grounds into a quart yogurt container and every few days I dump them over the side of my deck onto a dedicated coffee ground pile, where they sit undisturbed. Underneath that pile is my typical PNW heavy clay loam soil, not a compost-rich garden bed. If I disturb that coffee ground pile at all during the wet season, I find it's chock full of red wrigglers that somehow found their way to that pile. When it gets dry and hot they disappear. I'm wondering what's different about my environment from a compost pile that would make such a difference.
Me too
I think it's just the moisture level. If you can keep it moist the worms should stay. It's worth a try.
Good information! I also get eggshells from a small breakfast restaurant nearby.
Great tip!
Don't exagerate with the egg shells. They are mineral, worms can't use them in any way, they add a lot of calcium to the soil, which some plants don't tolerate well. They also influence pH - too many egg shells and your compost/soil will become alkaline.
@@a0flj0 Thank you. I distribute them over very large area
When slugs crawl over egg shells it cuts them and they die. Wondering if it does the same to worms.
@@louisestaats234 I work with slugs! Can’t get them to do a damned thing!
I put coffee grounds and eggshells in a pan in my oven, where they get toasted when I bake something. I then process them through my old Waring blender. This makes a great addition to potting soil or garden soil.
I bet! increasing the surface area like that probably makes them break down faster
@666toy soldier,
good lord how much time, energy and money did you expend putting those ingredients into your electron gobbling appliances? This is hardly the goal of composting! 🤷🏻♂️
dried and ground banana peel is great for houseplants - especially orchids .
Exactly! Some of live in colder climates and dont use worm composting and need to speed up the decomposing process by baking the eggs shells, grinding things, and other ways to speed up the process.
@@kathyscott4671 I made a winter garden here in the high desert where it gets too cold for regular gardening. I buried my compost materials about 2 feet down in the center of my 6' x 6' covered garden. I monitored the ground temperature in the buried pile while the plants were growing. It got up to 114 degrees Fahrenheit.
So, I still say that this can all be done naturally without unnecessary work and added CO$T of electricity.
A nicely edited, totally watchable, and very useful video! I really appreciated your English, which is correct and precise throughout, as well. This is intelligent, but simple. Good luck to you!
thanks for watching, glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks for a helpful reminder. I am pretty sure I had heard this long ago, but did not live in the country where I could garden for 5+ years and I sort of forgot. We just moved back to the country and I have been saving all my coffee grounds, and my husband and I drink a lot of coffee, like 2-3 cups a day each minimum.
I don't garden any more Land Lord won't allow, but this the best info I have seen. Thank you.
Thanks for the informational video. I have and do use my coffee grounds, combined with the shredded unbleached brown paper coffee filters, spent tea and chai tea bags, and crumbled egg shells. I simply dump all in a plastic container in my garage, then add to garden raised beds when the container is full. My plots are full of happy earthworms year round. I remember when I first started to sue this compost, along with the Splendid Increase of Taste and Harvesting of my veggies, especially sweetens the tomatoes and bell peppers. Along with other home made fertilizers, made from pulled plants and liquid calcium from egg shells and water sitting; I purchase Zero Commercial Fertilizers. My pest and disease control treatments are also made with organic, around the home ingredients. Such a Noticeable, Improved Taste over store bought wanna-be veggies! This video shows how recycling of your grinds and additives are so good for your garden.
The Starbucks inside the Target my wife used to go by in Durham, NC would bag the used grounds in 5 pound bags and put them in a basket for anyone to take near their register.
This video was much more enlightening than i expected. Thank you very much 😊 🙏
Earthworm/ Lumbricid activity! What a great, easy to quantify parameter to evaluate compostation! I'm sharing this to our Community Gardens group.
We add our coffee grounds in the brown, not the bleached white ones, coffee filter that the grounds are in. Our compost is alive with earthworms. Thanks for the info., and cardboard will be used now as well. ☺️
I learned something new. Thanks for the video
Thanks for the tip! I got a little nervous because I use coffee grounds in my worm compost hotel, ground compost stop and in my garden compost tumbler. But I always use cardboard and leaves. Wiping my head from relief. 😂. My worms are happy!!
The coffee grounds are nearly neutral. The worms do benefit from the mixture but I haven't found them to die from too much of a good thing. They live in the bottom of my pile of coffee grounds. Too much water and heat can kill them, though.
Nice job Andrew, I've been Vermicomposting since 2009 in a Can-O-Worms. I started a RUclips channel in 2020. It started out as a garden channel and has evolved into a combination garden/worm/life. I do love my worms and have 6 bins at this point.
Thanks for the suggestion on going to Starbucks 👩🌾👍
Do the worms survive winter outside or do we take them indoor?
@@eulabergado6927 mine have survived the winter but I am in CA so the temp doesn't drop to freezing for long periods. I would cover my bins in clear plastic during the rain to solar heat the bins. Leave room for air by placing a couple of 5 gal buckets at the corner between bins to tent the plastic. I also did lower the soil moisture ratio making it a bit drier during higher humidity periods. They seemed happy and were thriving even in winter but again winter is not weeks of freezing where Im at.
There are 6 Starbucks within a ten minutes drive from my formerly low organic matter soil garden spot. Two of them put only coffee grounds in green bins. Often they will contain perhaps 1,000 pounds of old grounds each. Score! Was able to grow monster okra, squash, pepper and potato crops the second year of composting.
Shredded paper works as well as cardboard does so does saw dust, grass clippings or anything with a high cellulose content and high surface areas to volume ratio. The cellulose absorbs some of the residual caffeine.
One of my granddaughters works for a coffee shop. She gets me some when she can. I have gotten a couple bushels so far.
Good point because you need greens and browns.
My mom used to coffee ground add egg shells in her worm Garden😊
Will have to try adding them to the compost. I HAVE been using them as mulch in a specific garden area - but here in Maine, they have NOT molded and decomposed, but just accumulated as a kind of brown organic sand on the soil surface. We apparently don't have the right mold - at least at our farm - to get them to decompose. The only way I can get that process even started at all is to admix bread crumbs and other readily-decaying materials that will start a mold culture. We also don't have to worry that much about the earthworms here, either. None of those we have are native - not one - and in some areas, they're destroying the leaf litter layer in the forests. Took me a while to realize the mantra "earthworms are great for the garden!" isn't always true! Plus, now we have the "Chinese jumping worms," which are in some areas wreaking environmental havoc.
earthworms are still native to North America. In Fact maine has had native worms before the populations died out during the last interglacial. They immediately rehabitated the region and not even all worms were killes during the ice age many nemotodes can survive freeze.
@@infernaldaedra ... Native earthworms in North America, fine. But not in Maine. (And an Interglacial is the time period BETWEEN major glacial events.) Sorry, but when you're considering Maine, there's NO evidence for earthworms in the fossil record. North America has been glaciated some 20-25 times in the last 2.5 million years, and there is NO evidence for earthworms in that time interval - because there are virtually no known DEPOSITS in Maine from before maybe 16,000 years ago (and I've worked on two of those four known older sites). You're operating entirely from speculation. ALL earthworms now found in "the wilds" of Maine are introduced - from nursery stock, deliberate introductions, or fishing bait turned loose at the end of the day. And Nematodes are no more earthworms than snakes are.
Very educational you guys are deep.🫡
This winter, we are using our hugelkultur garden as a compost heap....I will definitely start using coffee grounds (a trip to StarBucks might help) and shredded cardboard... should be a neat experiment.
Such a cool notion! I'm going to try this.
I was using coffee ground to fertilize some potted plants and it would form a hard crust on the top of the soil in the pots and make it hard for water to soak in. I had a bunch of free sawdust I had obtained so I just threw some sawdust on top of the grounds and the water was able to soak in again which softened the crust, dissolving it completely and the plants thrived and were finally able to utilize the nutrients from the coffee grounds. If you are throwing out stale, un-brewed coffee grounds, or using conifer sawdust, you might want to add some kind of agricultural lime to the mix as well.
When they done the study on coffee grounds, did they use fresh or used coffee grounds because fresh coffee grounds is very acidic.
Really useful advice. I will be increasing the amount of cardboard that I add to my compost bins.
I add egg shells in my coffee along with a few grains of salt (via Chester on Gunsmoke) makes a great cup!
Just started video but wanted to say, you've got the coolest😎 compost bins I've seen yet!!👍👍🙃
~ok, back to vid lol
I use coffee grounds all year , but needed this information ..thank you 🇨🇦
Glad it was helpful, thanks for watching!
Pure coffee grounds left in a plastic bag outside on the ground and weeks later it was Full of Woggims, likewise my compost bin, crammed with woggims.
I’m about to start composting for all my plants and herbs. This info was exactly what I needed to hear thank you
Glad it was helpful, thanks for watching!
I found the coffee was upsetting my worm farm, so I created a whole new bin just for coffee grounds and then put a handful of worms in, to see how they would go, whether they would evolve to suit their environment. But I also added some cardboard and hessian bags or things like that.
And they've been there seemingly happy for years.
But I also tend to keep my coffee moist in plastic bags for a few weeks to months before I add into the bins, I think this tends to let mould do the first part of the breakdown - and I think it may eradicate some of the nasty chemicals.
I love the idea of using industrial cardboard made from who knows what kind of source materials...... held together with glues and binders, probably some latex like your paper towels..... nice
Great information. Luckily I already do that. I drink a five cup pot a day and I include not only the grounds but also the paper filter. Cardboard is so plentiful and free. We have a DOLLAR GENERAL CLOSE BY AND THEY USE TONS OF IT. Sorry for the caps. Havagudun bud and thanks.
Very sincere, thanks for the good content.
My pleasure!
Also don’t use too much coffee grounds. It really heats up the vermicopost. . Cardboard it’s carbon rich while coffee grounds are nitrogen rich
First time I have heard this. Thanks!
Great video with good ideas. I have found that some cardboards are treated with insecticides and/or antifungals. Just my two bobs worth.
Wow great info! I’m a first time viewer and already use my coffee grounds (and sometimes Starbucks too), but I’ve been putting them directly on the soil where I have my plants (I mostly container-grow). But I’m starting a small compost area in my backyard so this video is right on time 👍🏽👍🏽👍🏽
Glad it was helpful, thanks for watching! 😀
I just throw the paper filters in with the coffee grounds...worms seem to love the paper filters....also you know what I do in summer? I go to places where people are throwing out the corn husks and the strings of the husks...my worms love that. Apparently you can boil that corn silk too and use it as a blood sugar regulator and you know what's crazy. Some people must have caught on because I saw some people selling the stuff.
I'm in chicago and I asked a couple coffee joints for grounds and they looked puzzled. After a couple other requests I found a dunkin that has been giving me more than I could imagine. I could barely lift the bags.
Awesome, I bet in a densely populated area like that one coffee shop probably produces a heck of a lot of grounds each day!
does chicago have a big drug addict problem? I ask because I am in Vancouver, BC and I used to be part of a community garden and I used to walk over to the Starbucks and collect their bags that were their old coffee grounds that they would put in the used up bean bags and go and dump those in my garden. One day I went and they stopped handing out those bags because some junkies were taking them and selling them to people at discounted prices pretending they had bought the beans and just needed the money. So they told people to bring their own container but they had some junkies manage to get other bags and do same thing so they didn't want to do it unless they knew for sure it was for gardening so then I started walking over there with a wheelbarrow and would tell them they could come with me or come visit me. They let me take them but I am wondering if these confused places are just scared of situations like these happening. Don't get me wrong. Drug addicts I have no issue with and I worked alongside a number of addicts in the garden who gardened to keep sober but I am looking at how businesses might have reasons why they don't want to do things....and of course they just might not understand the concept that one mans garbage is anothers treasure.
@@moniquevandeplas5210 Every city is full of addicts large and small. Yes chicago is full of tens of thousands of addicts.
Great to know! Thank you.🌹
Shredded tp rolls are great
I have never had problems with my vermicomposter - nice healthy worm population. I think the reason is that I just add my paper coffee filters with residual grounds after I shake out the excess grounds into another pail. This I empty into my other aerated compost binds with the kitchen and garden waste. Sometimes I do add carbon when I think I am low on carbon in the mix.
I agree with you. I've kept a 3 tier worm bin since 2008. We drink 16 cups/daily. I put in the grounds, filter, banana peel and strawberry tops 7 days/week. I can't tell if it is slowing them down, but I have to clean them out once a month. I also had ground Eggshells for grit and toilet paper and paper towel roll. I think the combination works for me.
@@peggyhelblingsgardenwhatyo7920 Sounds like a pretty good worm diet!
@@GoGreenCompost they are happy little creatures 🐛
@@peggyhelblingsgardenwhatyo7920 you drink 16 cups of coffee a day?
@@moniquevandeplas5210 my husband drinks most of it. 6oz. cups
Thanks so much! Great video, so I looked up earthworms, Wikipedia says an 'terrestrial invertebrate'. For some reason I thought that maybe the die off of the worms, could be the lack of pumpkin spice latte? Thanks again, I will save my coffee grounds for sure. Will subscribe now.
Thank you for adding the study link!
Thanks for the invaluable information...I will add cardboard to my coffee grounds compost.
I use to do this. Then I started growing mushrooms, oyster mushrooms, and use the coffee and cardboard as the growing substrate. After I get the mushrooms, I crumble what is left and add it to the garden
Tell me more! Do you use liquid culture, sawdust spawn, or what? Where do you get your cultures? Do you sterilize or pasteurize your substrate? Would love to hear your success stories with mushroom cultivation.
I started about this time last year, during the lock down. I did a Google search on the easiest mushrooms to grow and they all came up with oyster mushrooms. I got an oyster mushroom growing kit from Amazon. And did another Google search on how to propagate mushrooms and went with the stem butt method. It seemed the easiest for me to start with. When I harvested the first mushrooms I loosely chopped the stems. Then boiled some cardboard (it was the box the mushrooms arrived in) taking care to remove the peaces with ink and glue. When it had cooled down I squeezed out the excess water and placed it in an airtight container, a old ice cream container, and layed the stem butts with the cardboard. I didn't expect anything to happen. Within a few days the stem butts were fuzzy, and in about 3 weeks had completely colonised the cardboard. I drink 2 or 3 French presses of coffee a day. I had saved those in the freezer, in another ice cream container. When the container was full I placed the coffee in a pan, along with chopped up cardboard, a tablespoon of sugar and some ground eggshells. Boiled it for 15 minutes or so, and when it was cool added the colonised cardboard (all in another container). And kept it moist for a few weeks, until it was like candyfloss, then took the lid off, sprayed it a few times a day and in a few days the pins started to appear
Great video! I think I heard that worms like coffee grounds. Apparently, they do not. This is good to know. I have a mistrust of cardboard, because I am worried about glues, chemicals, whatever… We try to stay away from toxins as much as possible. However, I really like the idea of mixing grounds with leaves. I add coffee grounds directly to our garden beds, our planter, and to our compost pile. Great reminder for me to make a connection with coffee businesses to try to get some of those spent grounds. Thank you!
I wish I had known this before I was shocked when my worms disappeared! Thank you!
My coffee dealer has been supplying me with about sixty litres of grounds a week for years it makes really good compost 👍
I mix rotten hay, leaves, veggie scraps from the grocery store and old manure to my compost along with coffee grounds, but I've found, at the bottom of my huge pile of coffee grounds that I collect over the winter, that my red wigglers are doing quite well if not in the numbers in my piles.
My piles are on the ground with three layers of sheet plastic and hay in-between as well as a few feet of snow on top. When I open the oldest one up on Groundhog day to start my tomato and pepper plants. the wigglers are on the surface and very active. Before using the plastic and hay layers, the worms moved into the soil to just make it through the winter. N Idaho. -20 degrees F
So when you add the rotten hay, is this hay that you know hasn’t been sprayed with anything or GMO type etc.? The reason that I ask is because I am noticing a lot of problems with hay that has been sprayed, absolutely decimating gardens. So just made me wonder, if you are using just whatever hay you find and it’s still working just great? Thx!
@@evelyny7037 I do ask if any herbicide has been used. So far, none that I've found have been sprayed. My neighbor used some that had been sprayed and it took years to come back from it.
Thank you for the valuable information.
Great video! Will definitely be breaking down those Amazon boxes I have waiting to be put out with recycling and throw them in the backyard to be weathered, then added to compost pile and other flower beds for the winter.
My compost is chopped leaves and coffee grounds by way of a Su Johnson reactor. Always turns out great.
Thank you!!!! never heard this before..
Have you tried composting only coffee grounds with some 10 or 20 percent normal garden soil?
I compost tea grounds with clay and it's ready in a month to use.
My house hold goes thru 2 pots of joe per day, I spread the grounds thru out the garden year round.
The study you referenced wasn't detailed to know for sure, but I bet the probelm could also have been solved by simply feeding the worms correctly... by placing all new food in a corner which isolates the effects of food decomposition to that corner and doesn't contaminate the entire worm bed. This way, when the worms prefer a more pH neutral environment, they can retreat to their own bedding.
In fact, I would say my recommendation is the only sure way of avoiding a worm herd killing. You can mix more carbon into the food as you recommend but it's hard to specify the exact proportions.
I heard the best compost mix is coffee grounds, leaves and cut grass.
Great info. thanks
You bet, thanks for watching!
Thanks for the info
Thanks for watching!
I have a bin that I top up with cardboard, coffee ground (I have a coffee shot so lots of it) , egg shells , vegetable scraps ... a french study revealed that for the coffee to be good for your garden , it has to be 9 months old ... if it’s too young , not mature enough , it doesn’t do much good . So I keep that coffee mix in a separate composter.
Do you have a link for that study? Thx
@@jonesjr29 I am afraid it was a french article in a newspaper. But I will ask around and see if we can find it again on Facebook.
would definitely be interested in that study, let us know if you come across it again! thanks for watching 👍
Compost attracts Black Soldier Fly larvae (Hermetia Illucens) which quickly devour the coffee grounds in your compost. Don't be alarmed! They mutate into Black Soldier Flies which do not have any moving mouth parts. The Black Soldier Fly larvae are also very nutritious and can be feed to you chickens if you have them or to the fish in your pond.
I wish I had some chickens, I get a lot of black soldier fly larvae at certain times during the year
hard not to be alarmed seeing those guys eh? just as challenging as in Luke 2:10 I'd bet. lol
I have loads of BSF larvae in my compost bin and they avoid the grounds along with the citrus. I suppose if there was nothing else in the bin they might eat the grounds, but I haven't seen that yet. Plus, I have a pile of grounds composting separately from the bin and no BSF larvae have ever appeared in it. In fact, grounds seem to deter all sorts of insects including vermin. I think the smell must repel them. There is probably still a small amount of caffeine left in them which is a natural insect repellent. Even though they are considered a green, they are not nearly as high in N as grass clippings or kitchen scraps because the compost piles using just grounds as the green source don't heat up nearly as much. None of this stops me from collecting grounds though from my local SB's. Grounds are a year round source of greens unlike other sources which is crucial because I always have an overabundance of browns and I appreciate their repellent properties not just in the compost but the garden as well.
@@GoGreenCompost you can sell them
@@stevoblevoor Exodus 8:24
I compost with coffee grounds, kitchen waste, chicken waste in pine shavings and mulched leaves. The bsfl break down the kitchen waste and chicken waste. It makes a great soil and the bsfl makes a great healthy treat for the chooks. And if you want to attract the bsf to your compost, coffee grounds and banana peels will do it.
Good timing! I actually had planned to add a bag of coffee grounds to my 'tumbler' compost bin tomorrow so I will be sure to add plenty of cardboard with it. I would have been upset if I had accidently killed all my worms if I had added only the grounds.
Just add the filter paper with the grounds. Works the same as cardboard.
I use coffee grounds for when im going on a fishing trip , just replace the night crawers from the dirt they come in and replace with coffee grounds , two weeks before fishing trip , you will have the biggest crawers you have ever used.😊
Shredded office paper works well also.
The University of Arizona, Extension Service found that earth worms do not like coffee grounds, initially. The coffee grounds have to be in the soil for a number of months in which time the soil microbiome changes the chemical composition of the coffee grounds. After a few months earth works will consume the coffee grounds. Coffee grounds provide nitrogen but very little potassium and phosphate.
Hi, I just found your channel. Thank you for the information you provided.
Happy New Year
Good information. Thank you.
Yep, coffee is high in Nitrogen... gotta keep that balance with carbon... 30:1 C:N is preferred,,,, makes sense. Good tip! cheers!
What about tea or tea bags?
I just started a compost pile last summer and have been throwing in grounds regularly. As soon as all the snow melts, I will be sure to add the shredded cardboard. Good information, thanks!!
thanks for watching!
I've learned to compost with worms in N Idaho with cold winters. To keeps the pile warm, put iton the ground with triple insulated layers of hay and sheet plastic. Without the insulation, the worms went into the ground to survive, but now I'll get potting soil ready to go with worms on the surface of the pile the end of January to start my peppers. Give them plenty of greens to get through the fall and winter.
I haven't used cardboard but spoiled hay free on Craig's list works well and has more nutrients.
@@robertdouglas8895 Thanks for the information !
I watch a video of an study of 3 kinds of worms and coffee grounds and with non coffee grounds and study shown slower breeding of worms in coffee grounds added to worm bins?
Great information! Thanks...
Good video. I do the same thing, I get coffee grounds from my local Starbucks
Good stuff!
Thank you
What about putting lime in the compost too?
there are places to get free sawdust too. I bet that would work as well. I have really dense dirt in my front strip by the street. I am trying an experiment. I am adding coffee, leaves, sawdust and my camilia flowers that dropped. I read that worms do well if they have a good mix of stuff above ground... so I'll see
Young Aussie guys in Fremantle West Australia getting coffee grounds to grow mushrooms in ship containers. Coffee shops then buy back what they grow.
awesome way to add value and utilize a waste product!
What ratio do you recommend of cardboard to coffee?
My worm population are going gang busters and I give them all our coffee grounds. I may not have noticed the affect because I also put into the kitchen pot toilet rolls, torn mail, tissues, paper napkins and sometimes small bits of cardboard. Kitchen scraps the chickens can’t eat too. I must have been automatically balancing it for them.
Fantastic video Thank You
Thanks for the info! For my worms, I use coconut peat, ground egg shells and coffee grounds, and now thanks to this video, shredded cardboard. Is this OK and what else am I missing? And in what proportions should they all be?
Just add a paper layer in your Kitchen Pail, then add a layer each time the one below is covered. This gives a good mix of vege waste, coffee grounds and paper material. Also, make sure you have drained the Coffee grounds of excess water. I put then is a separate container to let them settle, then drain the excess liquid.
Thank you for the cardboard advice.
I love your Stainless Steel bucket to collect your grounds in your kitchen …..
WHERE can I get one ????? … Please ????? 💗🙃💗…. Thank You, Joanie