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If you have a protective view of the earth than you'll want to reuse your coffee grounds and other organic scraps in the garden. We should always return as much organic material as we can to the earth so that the land will be re-nourished. Coffee grounds are especially quick to be reabsorbed in the soil and earthworms love them! I go through about 4 or 5 pots of coffee per week so that creates a lot of the grounds.

We usually begin by accumulating a big pail of grounds and other vegetable waste for the garden. Before we use this material we re-hydrate with warm water and sometimes add just a few drops of detergent. The detergent helps our plants absorb more nutrients from the soil and the grounds. When we have time we mix the grounds with soil and any additional composting material that we have. Actually depending upon the season, we may just go ahead and mix the grounds immediately into a big 55 gallon barrel of garden waste. When winter comes around here the rains can keep coming down for weeks and as a result we have found that the coffee grounds and the yard waste easily become composted after about 6 months. We stir the material with a shovel when it's raining so we can keep down the flies and what little odor there is. By the time we're ready to plant or work the soil we have a fine black compost that easily works into the soil.

We than take a cup or so of this mixture and pour this around various plants that we are interested in feeding. Certain garden pests are repelled by this material. Other garden friends such as the worms I mentioned earlier are attracted to these grounds. Worms thrive on a mixture of the grounds, garden compost and soil.

In the as the summer season passes and fall returns, we once again resurrect our large barrel for our composting. We repeat the process and put all the summer coffee grounds in that tub with all of the organic scraps and garden clippings to make the compost. We also shovel in some soil and a small amount of sand with the scraps and grounds. We keep getting bigger and bigger barrels because depending upon what we're planting, it doesn't last too long. We'll probably start using a second recycling barrel this year.

Finally, we live about 3 blocks from the pacific ocean. The soil is a bit thin but by processing our food scraps, yard waste and coffee grounds, we are building the soil up year after year. We hope that as we continue to do this, our plants will even become more beautiful and bountiful than they already are.

Learn more about this author, Leonard Keigher.
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