I have a banana a day and was composting with coffee but now I will keep them separate.

Most of the time I just fling a can of used coffee grounds into the yard. No technique needed. Just fling. I've done it for years.

Karen

LOL! I think fling counts as a technique. Flinging probably looks a lot like slinging. I just make sure none gets in the 'lawn,' or anything that might make that grow more.

LOL on the lawn thing, wish I could just mow it once and then it would be done for the summer!

Yep, pretty much I usually save used grounds in an empty coffee can. In summer, when using my compost bin, I'll use filters too. Winter - too cold or snowy or icy to get to my bin - I just save the grounds and fling 'em outside. Wherever they land is better than the garbage can I guess.

Karen

Someone pointed out that the only thing to beware is laying down such a thick layer of coffee grounds that they get matted when soggy and keep air and water away from the soil.

Like, a 2-3 inch thick layer of coffee-ground-mulch would be too much if you didn't scratch it in to the top 4-5". Like, after bringing home the entire daily output from a Starbucks or 7-11.

Even then, wouldn't it matter how coarsely ground it was?

Espresso grind, filter cone grind, percolator grind or "mulch".

I save the plastic bags from mulch and soil and use those as 'mini-composters'. Find an out-of-the-way spot for a bag or two, fill it with your scraps, remember to add some soil and a few dried leaves, close the top of the bag (clothes-pins work), remember to poke a few holes in the bottom of the bag. In the spring, dump out the bags (sift or sort as needed). The bags can be rinsed, dried and placed into the city's recycle container.

We have a counter top collector for food scraps (provided by the city). Once a week I empty it into the bokashi bin covering the contents with the bran mixture. This gives me some house plant fertilizer from the drained liquid. It takes a while for us to fill a bucket. Have three bokashi bins so no hurry to empty them into the garden when they are ready.

If you have to wait too long for your compost to break down to use in your garden, there is a quick way. I keep an old, cheap blender just for this (but there's no reason you couldn't use your regular blender). Use a handful of scraps (I keep eggshells separate), and lots of water and make a veggie smoothie! Make a trough around your veggies or plants and pour in. Then cover up, you don't want to encourage flies, etc. I do this with my banana peels only to make "smoothies" for my roses and they love it. For this purpose you could always keep a bag of scraps in your freezer.

Orchidgal.
That is such a great idea. Maybe you could submit it to Trish for publication on the website.

When I first learned about composting, I thought, "No way, with my sensitive nose!"

But the more I got into gardening, the more classes and seminars I took. I lived in Denver and discovered there were many advanced gardeners in my neighborhood. Eventually, all the composting tidbits sank in and I took a class to become a Master Gardener. I paid much more attention when it was mentioned that compost didn't have to stink. Since that day, I've been nearly obsessive about my compost bin.

My roommate built me a 4' compost box. It is about 3'-4' high and 3' deep and the sides are lined with black plastic. The bottom is just the bare dirt. And the top is unlined for aeration. We added our scraps and mixed it in a bit almost every time. About once a month I'd toss in a bit of dirt and straw and water to make it damp but not wet. Unfortunately, there aren't many trees for leaves where I live now and grass is much more rare. November 1, we topped off the bin with straw and closed the lid for the winter. In late February, we opened it up, mixed it up and added a bit of water. It was ready to use in March. The entire bin was all compost.

During the winter, with our compost bin closed for business, we kept scraps in a big trash can. Again, we added dirt and straw to keep the smell down, but didn't mix it up. It's been breaking down just fine. I will soon have an empty compost bin again and can dump the big trash can into the real compost bin. As long as the compost bin gets closed off, it speeds up the composting, if you have been keeping up with the waste-greens-browns ratio, it won't smell. I didn't believe it, but now I do.

Most home bins don't get hot enough to throw in weeds, so I keep those out of the bin. I also avoid meats and dairy products. I haven't had any problems with bread - probably because that doesn't get wasted much here, so very little ends up in the compost. I also don't add any kind of stews or mixed up leftovers. I add coffee grounds and egg shells weekly. This year, we plan to add some worms to the garden and to the compost bin.

In the fall I empty out the finished compost on the garden from the bin. I leave a six inch or so base, then add my scraps in there all winter. Each time I empty the kitchen bin, I grab a handful of leaves from the bag I have next to the bin. It is good to have some brown material layered with the high nitrogen scraps.

Coffee grounds straight up will raise the pH too much, so be careful! It is best to mix them in with the compost first.

I have two ideas about composting if anyone is interested. One is called "compost happens" and the other one is about using coffee grounds.

In an earlier thread I read that coffee grounds have a near neutral pH so they should not have any bad effect on the finished compost.

That is after they are composted Greene. I read an article on youbetyourgarden.com

The guy used to be editor for Organic Gardening magazine. (Mike McGrath)

Here's some info on coffee grounds:
http://www.sunset.com/garden/e...

I save used grounds in an empty coffee can, and when it's full I sometimes dump it into the compost, or I just fling them into the yard. In the winter, I usually just fling anywhere and run into the house.

Karen

Each batch of coffee and the resulting coffee grounds will differ somewhat, but essentially the used coffee grounds are close to a neutral pH. There have been a number of tests; I offer two examples.

http://extension.oregonstate.e... = "Contrary to popular belief, coffee grounds are not acidic. After brewing, the grounds are close to pH neutral, between 6.5 and 6.8. The acid in the beans is mostly water-soluble, so it leaches into the coffee we drink."


http://faq.gardenweb.com/faq/l... = "Roasted coffee is fairly acidic, but it appears that almost all of the acid is water soluble and is extracted during brewing. Used grounds have essentially neutral pH, although the coffee beverage produced is rather acidic. The measured pH of used coffee grounds was 6.9, with a significant amount of buffer capacity - adding the coffee to either acidic or basic solutions drove both towards neutral pH. The exact pH of used grounds will depend on the pH and alkalinity of the water used in brewing, but with any potable water, used grounds will be close to neutral pH."

I stand corrected!

No need to stand , please have a seat while I tell you my theory.

In my home when I refer to used coffee grounds, I mean exactly that. Just the used grounds and one unbleached paper filter. Drinking only one cup a day it takes me a long time to make a huge pile of coffee grounds. Not enough to test. I could do more acid damage to my compost by chucking orange and lemon peels into the composter.

Some friends worked as barristas/baristi at Starbucks and other coffee places around town. They told me (and I saw with my own eyes) that occasionally they will grab the wrong type of coffee (or more often the customer will change his/her order) and the 'wrong' coffee gets chucked in the bin - in other words lovely, acidic un-used ground coffee added to the waste container. So any test being done on supposedly 'used' coffee grounds from a place as large as Starbucks could be inaccurate.

And here I am adding a guess...one other thing that might throw off a test is the 'natural ingredients and exotic flavors' in some of the Starbucks flavored coffees.

Aren't the "exotic flavorings" just sugary syrups added to the cup after the coffee is poured? I don't know much about it because I don't like those frufru drinks. It's black coffee only for me.

Karen

Well, when I throw coffee grounds into the compost pile they are normally already mixed with egg shells, the paper filters and other kitchen waste. So acid or not they get composted, I just never seem to have enough.