Coffee Gounds and Coffee Ground Tea

I love the calculator. As a city dweller with a tiny back yard and limited storage area, I try to collect only the amount of material needed to fill the one cubic yard bin. For example, if I send my husband to get some horse manure, I can tell him the amount I need. Storing manure in the neighborhood would not be neighborly. What I have learned over the 3 years of making compost is how much leaf material is needed. After chopping up with the lawn mower, the volume shrinks considerably.

Has, I think of coffee grounds as organic matter. I'm not sure what nutrients a cup of coffee would provide. (except to wake me up!) ??

has55 wrote:has anyone try making compost tea from coffee ground or soaking it to get the liquid nutrients pulled out for feeding the plants?

Hmmmm, I might try that.  Give me some time.  You're talking pure coffee grounds only right?  I plan on making compost tea using some of my finished or nearly finished compost, which has coffee in it, but it also has other stuff mixed with it.  I might be able to find time to do some runs "coffee only" and then to see if it does any good I'll need to select a "test subject" plant and feed that the coffee "brew" only.  Coffee grounds are supposed to be a good source of phosphorous, potassium, magnesium, copper, and they release nitrogen as they degrade.  The "concept" of compost brewing is to soak AND introduce air so that the compost can still "do it's thing" and you're hoping you get some of the nutrients and "product" into solution instead of bound to the material of the compost.  It's kind of "organic-chemical" fertilizer?  You're trying to get the nutrients into solution for a quicker delivery to the plant via roots and even leaves.  
Anyway, it might be decent, coffee grounds all by themselves technically has "N-P-K", maybe it can make a decent "drench" for a quick jolt. I know it works in the piles under normal composting.  I really like it as a normal component in my compost.  I wonder.... I'll see if I can work something in this season and update you later, maybe start a "coffee brewing" thread and share pictures over the season.

Sunset magazine looked at using coffee grounds as a heavy soil incorporation.  Basically it's a very very weak slo-release fertilizer, soil acidifier and organic matter supplement for mineral soils.  Sounds like the phosphorus, magnesium, potassium and copper are readily available in grounds form.   With Phosphorus and potassium starting out at 0.06% and 0.6% concentration levels, you're looking at really low supplementation levels.

http://www.sunset.com/garden/earth-friendly/starbucks-coffee-compost-test

In other words, great stuff to cut into the clay and sand stuff the desert southwest calls soil.

sanderson wrote:Has,  I think of coffee grounds as organic matter.  I'm not sure what nutrients a cup of coffee would provide.  (except to wake me up!)  ??

I 2nd that on the wake up and organic material., but someone may have some surprising new results for us.

awesome replies Zmoore and no_such_reality. gardening is a awesome journey among gardening friends.

sanderson wrote:I love the calculator.  As a city dweller with a tiny back yard and limited storage area, I try to collect only the amount of material needed to fill the one cubic yard bin.  For example, if I send my husband to get some horse manure, I can tell him the amount I need.  Storing manure in the neighborhood would not be neighborly.  What I have learned over the 3 years of making compost is how much leaf material is needed.  After chopping up with the lawn mower, the volume shrinks considerably.

how hard is it to use the lawn mower to make smaller leaf particles and increase surface area for the bacterial and fungi, thus speeding up the composting time? Do you spread out , so wide and so many inches deep?

I had to gp back and read the sunset article a couple of more time, because something kept bothering me about nutrient availability. This is what I found and believe there is a solution for realizing all the available nutrient and a significant speed.I believe this is the results that the "one yard revolution" guy is having on youtube, but don't know why,yet. he said he was going to just use coffee now and quit making compost tea. I believe he will be in error on this decision, but still good result, because he will be adding his compost material. Take a look at my logic below and correct me or point out anything you see that sparks ideas or should be corrected or warn for it moving into a dangerous practice.

Sunset wrote: 

"Total nutrient levels: Each cubic yard of these coffee grounds contains a total of 10.31 lbs. nitrogen, of which 0.01 lb. (0.09%) are available. Thus, even though available nitrogen is considered deficient in this product, there still remains over 10 lbs. of total nitrogen per cubic yard of coffee grounds. Thus, nitrogen is primarily bound in the organic fraction and is unavailable to plants until soil microorganisms degrade the organic fraction. Through this process, the nitrogen is converted to plant available forms. Over the long term the coffee grounds will act like a slow release fertilizer providing long-term nitrogen input which can then be utilized by plants.
Nearly all potassium and all magnesium are in the available forms. This means that immediate availability improvements for these two elements will take place when the coffee grounds are blended with mineral soils. About half of the copper and calcium are in their immediately available forms.
All other plant essential elements are primarily bound in the organic fraction and will thus be subject to slow release over time as soil microbes continue to degrade the organic fraction."

in 1 cu yd of coffee is 10 lbs Nitrogen that is bound up and unavailable until those good guy in the soil web consumed the coffee ground to release this wonderful material. Noted their no info on testing with compost tea.
According to the "teaming with Microbes"book, the addition of compost tea will release significant bacterial, fungi, nematodes and protozoa's into the soil. This would allow them to eat the coffee grounds, capture the nutrients (nitrogen, calcium,etc..) into their bodies (bacterial and fungi, fertilizer bags) to give to the plants in exchange for the exudate or be eaten by the earthworms , protozoans,and nematodes, which would release the nutrient into the rhizosphere zone of the plants, so they could readily use it.

has55 wrote:
how hard is it to use the lawn mower to make smaller leaf particles and increase surface area for the bacterial and fungi, thus speeding up the composting time? Do you spread out , so wide and so many inches deep?

It's not hard at all, if you have a bag to catch the leaves. After being milled by the mower just layer it as you would when building a compost pile; Layer of green (don't forget to use the coffee grounds), layer of brown that are anywhere from 1-4" deep. Don't forget a little water and O2 is required as well.  


OK folks. Any more questions about coffee grounds?

I spread leaves in my front yard, then make a pass with my Honda quadra-cut mulching mower, dump the bags out on the lawn and repeat.  Then I put the shredded leaves in a wheelbarrow and fill with water to make sure they are 100% saturated before layering into the compost pile.

My alternate method is to rig the garden hose to continuously spray into the compost bin while I build the layers...its confounding sometimes how even layers of a new compost pile will shed water...one can spray a pile of dried leaves for 15 minutes and they're still dry as a bone just a few inches down.

I have oak leaves which tend to take longer to break down...the extra effort tends to speed things up a bit.

Coffee pucks - If I don't dance on the bags from Starbucks to break them apart, they go through the Berkeley hot method basically intact.

wow, some good methods for breaking the leaves down with the mower and wetting the compost between each later.
Thank you, Campprn and landarch
Sanderson, I didn't know that about the coffee bags. I just collected some coffee grinds from starbuck this AM after I posted. I been giving the bags to the worms since I was struggling with doing a compost pile. Great info to know.

Today, I planted some bell peppers and tomatoes. I mixed the composted soil with coffee at the recommended ratio from the sunset research test results on coffee. The  link that no_such_reality provided for us . I blended it together with the soil, but added vermicompost from my vermicomposting bucket to the bottom of the plant hole, which was loaded with worms. I also added Mycorrhizae fungi to the root section of the holes. Since coffee has a generous amount of magnesium, i'm going to add compost tea to 
see it I can get the bound calcium release. Will send updates.



I found this slug in the top of the vermicomposting bucket. Since I found out that compost tea will have plenty of beneficial nematodes , I won't be collecting them. So to my neighbors chickens they will go for lunch.





plenty of worms with each handful of vermicompost. It was easy to harvest out of the bucket. I left plenty of worms in the bucket for the next filling of food scrape, coffee, etc....

When I do add coffee grounds to my beds, I make sure I toss in a few earthworms as well. They love the coffee grounds and will eat the grounds, making more casts right in the box.

camprn wrote:When I do add coffee grounds to my beds, I make sure I toss in a few earthworms as well. They love the coffee grounds and will eat the grounds, making more casts right in the box.

awesome!

has55 wrote:...
in 1 cu yd of coffee is 10 lbs Nitrogen that is bound up and unavailable until those good guy in the soil web consumed the coffee ground to release this wonderful material. Noted their no info on testing with compost tea.
According to the "teaming with Microbes"book, the addition of compost tea will release significant bacterial, fungi, nematodes and protozoa's into the soil. This would allow them to eat the coffee grounds, capture the nutrients (nitrogen, calcium,etc..) into their bodies (bacterial and fungi, fertilizer bags) to give to the plants in exchange for the exudate or be eaten by the earthworms , protozoans,and nematodes, which would release the nutrient into the rhizosphere zone of the plants, so they could readily use it.

From what I understood from the compost tea "brewing" is that some of the "release" of the nutrients into the water is what happens when brewing.  Actively inserting the air into the process help the microbes do their thing and the addition of something like molasses to the mix adds some more food for the microbes to go to work.  When they do their "work" they release some nutrients that would go to a plant, but in the brewing process goes into solution instead... for you to then add directly to the plants in an already available soluble form for the plants to uptake.
Now, you mentioned trying coffee brew only.  I do wonder if there are enough microbes in the plain coffee to do "work" in the brewing process to release nitrogen in particular.  I THINK I'd want to add some compost to the coffee to kind of "inoculate" it with microbes for "brewing".  Well, if I add compost then I have no way of knowing if Coffee alone will work.   Well, I doubt I'll have time to run all the experiments I'd really like to.  I think I'll just try plain coffee first and see what if anything happens.  I wonder if I should even add something like molasses or just stick with plain coffee?  Well, I'll try a basic coffee only mix first.  See what happens and maybe it just becomes "base line" experiment.  Then we see what happens if we add something else.

Zmoore
My interpretation of compost tea is with microbes only. I do not recall nutrients being a factor at all, it's all about multiplying beneficial bacteria, fungi, etc. When added to plants and soil these microbes then start to do what they need to do in order for plant growth..
Did you know these organisms emit a glue that keeps them affixed to leaves, roots, so they cannot be lown away or removed until death. ???

Had to pull out the book and review.

These two books are with me forever, when a wait for anything is needed, I pull one out and read...I need to read over many times before getting it, even then not always successful..

Stumbled across this on Facebook under Container Gardening Alliance.  http://mygardeningstories.com/using-coffee-grounds-gardening-guide-correct-uses/

Very good info. Thank you.

 I think I'll do more mulching and less composting with coffee grounds from now on.

So last Saturday I asked our local Starbucks to save grounds for me in the silver bags.  No problem.  I was supposed to go back on Sunday to pick them up but I forgot.  I just remembered and called.  They had thrown them out! 

But the nice man said he will start saving again today and I'm to collect tomorrow.
CC

CapeCoddess wrote:So last Saturday I asked our local Starbucks to save grounds for me in the silver bags.  No problem.  I was supposed to go back on Sunday to pick them up but I forgot.  I just remembered and called.  They had thrown them out! 

But the nice man said he will start saving again today and I'm to collect tomorrow.
CC

That funny, all the starbucks in the dallas-ft. worth area will set them out in a basket or pail, then it open to anyone who get their first.