A few years ago I lived in a condo.  There was no yard to garden nor any place to compost my kitchen scraps.  Or so I thought….

Just down the street from me was the Compost Education Centre.  They taught me to operate a worm bin.  I know – – it sounds pretty gross, having worms inside my home, but really it’s pretty cool.  No smell.  Little fuss.  Lotsa benefits for the house plants…

Why send all that potential ‘black gold‘ to the landfill, right?

Aren’t I virtuous?  Even as an urbanite I can be environmentally conscious.   🙂

I remember being taught that coffee grounds were a no-no (too acidic), so those still go to the dump.

Bu wait!
Times have changed.

Chatting with Marika, operations manager at the Compost Centre,
it turns out that recent research shows that indeed the coffee itself is acidic, but most of that acid flushes out during the brewing process & little is left in the coffee grounds themselves.

So, it’s not so good to water your plants with coffee.

But it is ok to throw the grounds into the compost along with regular kitchen scraps.

Cool.  Imagine how much more ‘black gold’ we’ll be making now!

Here’s some further info sources on composting coffee grounds:

• Oregon State University
• GardenWeb
• GardensAlive

-30-
© SVSeekins and Garden Variety Life, 2013