Coffee grounds add shot of nutrients

TO OUR READERS: We lied: We told you last year that we were ending Dave Philipps' column on being a novice gardener because, after two years of digging in the dirt, he thought he had nothing new to learn. How wrong he was. Plus, readers wrote in over the winter hoping the column would sprout again, so we're bringing it and the accompanying blog back. The column will run the third Thursday of the month through gardening season. See the blog at gazettegarden.blogspot.com.

I think the worms in my garden are going to be extra frisky this year. I'm plying them with coffee.

Two years ago, I started writing about planting a small kitchen garden with the goal of getting a maximum of fresh food and enjoyment with a minimum investment of time and money. I quickly found that the key to success is good dirt. And this year I'm hoping the key to good dirt will be coffee grounds.

Good dirt makes everything else simple. Soil full of organic material (decomposed leaves, grass, etc.) is full of nitrogen and potassium that plants need. It holds moisture better, which means you have to water less often, and keeps the dirt loose and aerated, encouraging roots to grow and worms to burrow. All this makes for strong plants, which means less disease and more delicious veggies.

But how to get good dirt? Gardeners can readily buy bales of sphagnum moss and sacks of manure but I wanted to try to be more sustainable. Buying moss or manure trucked in from who knows where didn't fit with my idea of a local garden, especially when there are lots of compostables right in the neighborhood. I found an endless supply at a local Starbucks.

Starbucks sells about 297 million pounds of coffee a year, enough 1-pound bags to stretch around the planet once and still have enough left over to reach Borneo. That's a lot of beans.

Most of the grounds are tossed in the trash and go into landfills where they break down, creating methane - a greenhouse gas with 23 times more heat-trapping power than carbon dioxide. But there's no reason to throw them away. Starbucks gives them away for free. Just ask, and an employee will hand you a prepackaged sack. Most other coffee shops do the same. Or use grounds from your own brew.

The grounds are loaded with nitrogen and are only slightly acidic, so they make perfect compost. Either mix them with leaves and other "brown" yard waste (for an explanation, visit gazettegarden. blogspot.com) or stir them right into the dirt.

"You don't want too much," Ross Krummel, a Colorado master gardener, warned me. "But a little is great."

So I've been stopping by Starbucks every few days to pick up big, silver bags of the stuff. I've dumped some in my compost and mixed some into my garden soil. As the season goes on, I'll sprinkle more around certain plants so more nutrients can sink in.

Will it work? It already has my compost steaming with life. I plan to treat one of my two small garden beds with coffee grounds and homemade compost, and one with moss and manure from the store. We'll see at the end of the season which was the better choice.

In the meantime, every time I stir the compost, it smells like I'm ordering a tall cappuccino. And maybe I'm imagining it, but the worms seem to be wriggling just a little bit faster.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0223 or dave.philipps@gazette.com.