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This is one of the best articles I've read! It was thorough, and informative and offered new information about a subject with which I was already familiar. I liked the physical layout; the sideboxes and hot links were especially helpful.
I especially enjoy the writer's style - what a great 'voice'. I hope to read more of his work.
In New England, we have not only Starbucks but also DunkinDonuts. After all, "America runs on Dunkins"... Anybody know about Dunkin Donuts policy re: coffee grounds? There are about four I can think of on my routine travels, and I'd have to go out of my way for a Starbucks!
Thank you, Jeremy; very nice layout and great links!
Just point out to the Dunkin folks that Starbucks puts them in empty coffee sacks and shares them with gardeners and that it's a "GREEN" thing to do.
As Jeremy is a dear friend of mine and sometimes we have a race into Starbuck's LOL.
We can't afford their goodies, but love them grounds.
Sidney
Thanks, all, for the kind comments. I think Sugarweed is correct -- if you approach most any place like Dunkin' Donuts and ask them to provide you with coffee grounds, and mention the Starbucks initiative for recycling grounds and the Earth-friendly aspects, they would be likely to cooperate. It does require a slight bit of effort on the part of the store manager and employees to set aside a separate trash can for collection of the coffee grounds.
We planted several varieties of hydrangeas at the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens when I worked there last year. The desire was to have blue flowers on the hydrangeas, and I had experience with keeping the hydrangea flowers blue in my home garden by applying coffee grounds around the base of the plants once or twice a month. At the zoo, we asked the three restaurants on premises to keep the coffee grounds separate and we collected them once a week. Once the restaurant staff got into the habit of dumping the coffee grounds into the specified trash can, it really didn't require much effort on their part.
One approach might be to provide the establishment with a small trash can with a lid marked in large letters, "coffee grounds only," at the time you ask them to save the grounds for you. They might be more willing to cooperate if the mechanism for keeping the grounds separate is immediately available and doesn't require any special purchase or effort on their part. The other part of the equation, then, is to make sure you follow up on a regular basis (a specified day) to collect the coffee grounds so that they know you are serious about wanting the grounds and so that they don't have the grounds sitting around for an extended time.
I tried putting coffee grounds into my compost, and the critters ATE them! I thought the chipmunks were zipping around faster than usual... Perhaps I should try mixing them thoroughly into the soil.
Interesting info on the benefits. Thanks!
Good job- Great title! I had no luck the last few times I tried hunting, but now my nearest busiest SB hads changed their tune! They don't do the foil bags . Two weeks ago, thye apologized and said they HAD been holding some but had no takers so they scurried around and gave me what they could. Last week, they handed me the trash can bag with a good four gallons or so!! Hey, they didn't have to haul it out the back door and down to the dumpster.
Picture of coffee 'pucks'
And--the grounds that way come with one or two big trash bags you can re-use!!
as far as other stores- observe their set up. In some cases the coffee area will be separate, in other cases it is going to interfere with their operation. It will only take ONE time that they have those saved grounds around that they decide it aint worth it.
One time I was able to find a bag of grounds in back of the store--along with a few recyclable jugs, and some other trash to pick out.
While researching the article, I came across the information about roses doing well with coffee grounds as a soil amendment. It does seem that a lot of rose growers find their roses are improved by coffee grounds.
In the interest of keeping the coffee grounds article focused, I left out a lot of the claims for coffee grounds that I came across because I couldn't find any research or controlled experiments to support the claims. And also, some of the claims for coffee grounds just seemed blatantly false from my own experiences. For instance, coffee grounds are reported to keep cats out of a garden, but I put coffee grounds in a potted Clivia on my front porch and that became the favorite resting spot for one of my cats. So, I chose to limit the article to report only the verified benefits of coffee grounds, while accepting that a lot of the benefits claimed by gardeners for coffee grounds might be equally true. I also doubt that coffee grounds will repel ants inside a home. I had a DG friend recently try coffee grounds for this purpose and she reported that the ants loved the coffee grounds, and I've had carpenter ants building nests immediately adjacent to stored coffee grounds..
Here are just a few of the discussions that have occurred in DG Forums about coffee grounds and roses (more Forum discussions on this topic can be found by using the search bar at the top of each DG Forum page, and searching for "coffee grounds" in general in all the Forums, and you can also limit your search to specific Forums). I'll let you read them and decide for yourself, but it seems that coffee grounds do provide benefits for roses from the experiences of most gardeners. I've not come across any reports that coffee grounds do any harm to roses.
This article immediately improved my opinion of Starbucks, although as one who daily brews his own pot of coffee, I won't need to take advantage of their conscientiousness. I really appreciate the tip about potentially "bluing" hydrangeas! Thanks for the great article. :-) - Dean
Another tip--someone suggested to me that coffee grounds can cover the smell of fresh, yummy kitchen waste that you bury in the garden and that you don't want critters digging into.
