Cofee Grounds for Peat Moss

As I have mentioned before I have used peat moss exclusively for bedding for 5 decades. Since cutting back on coffee I have not had many grounds to add to my indoor bins lately, so I visited one of the small coffee shops in town. They were very obliging and within a week I have picked up about 20 gallons of coffee grounds. My normal procedure it so replace about 10 percent of the spent media weekly in each of four indoor bins with soaked and drained peat moss. For the last week I have been adding coffee grounds exclusively and it seems to be working just fine.

I went to Lowte's to pick up several bails of peat moss and the price had jumped as expected, but the bails were 3.0 cubic feet instead of 3.8 cubic feet. So it looks like coffee grounds are going to take the place of peat moss in the future. I don't know how that would work for newly started bins, but I haven't started a bin from scratch in so many years I can't remember doing it.

Morgan, I have been adding coffee grounds to my bin every weeks after the second week of starting it. I tell you these worms are amazing me to no end. The bin is crawling with baby ones. Thanks once more.

Thanks, this reminds me to ask Starbucks again - I got tired of asking for grounds a couple of years ago because I was always too late. Maybe the early gardeners have stopped going to Starbucks now.
My worms are still grateful for the two filters full of our home brewed coffee grounds. They are especially ecstatic since my wife started blending a bunch of fruit and vegetables into a breakfast smoothie, leaving lots of peelings for me to feed the worms.

I have found a couple of minor drawbacks to coffee grounds: Media is clumpy and stays fairly moist. Although neither one creates any concern, I find it a bit more difficult to remove spent media from the surface of the bins and the clumps on top contain moisture which makes it difficult to use immediately. Worms are not moving to the opposite side of the trench either. Typically they move to the food after feeding and apparently there is enough food source in the coffee grounds to keep them in place. With increased temperatures the worms are rapidly breeding and I don't like disturbing them any more than necessary, which means backing off on the feeding to about once a week. Solution is to start more bins and to get busy with outdoor vermicomposting as well. Just wish it would stop snowing.

Duane,
I thought they moved to a food trench TO feed, stay there til it's all gone on that side, then move to the opposite trench when they sense more food. Is that what you said?

Yes...that's why I was surprised to see so many worms still in the trench I was getting ready to feed. Once the coffee grounds are mixed in with the media it's impossible to tell if they have been eaten. The mear fact that there are so many worms left in the trench last fed is an indication the grounds have not been digested. Less frequent feeding is the only answer I could come up with.

I have a compost bin next to the side of the house which I have been adding some rotted winter squash and potatoes from last season. I tossed in four large bags of coffee grounds (Walmart plastic grocery bags), which my supplier uses to dispose the grounds in. Although there was a large number of worms already from the seeding I gave the bin about a month ago, I figured I would see how the grounds would work in stimulating their reproduction rate no that it is warming up some. I was told once that food stimulated worm reproduction, so I figured the coffee ground should also kick up their breeding activity in the out door vermicomposting. Tomorrow I will layer a raised bed using 1/4th coffee grounds in the growing media formula and seed with worms from the indoor bins. At the rate I have been collecting coffee grounds (avg 2-3 bags a day this should be an interesting test of the outdoor vermicomposting.

And, I almost forgot, today I used this same mix to mulch on my raspberry patch (4' x 60'). No reason not to seed this tomorrow with red wigglers as well when I water it in. Unless I do some top dressing later with coffee grounds. I doubt the worms would flourish for long, but the main idea is to get the worms to process the coffee grounds which according to recent research will benefit the compost value by four or five times over just straight composting.

Glad you asked the question Linda. It has given me several more ideas worth trying with the outdoor vermicompostin/coffee grounds.

Tea leaves are also a good additive, especially in the summer if you drink a lot of ice tea. I buy loose leaf, and make a lot of sun tea. The spent leaves are excellent for worm bin as it is moist and finely textured.

Coffee grounds alone have lead to a clumpy media. Although coffee grounds seem to hold moisture well, I have gone back to a mix of peat moss and coffee grounds on about an equal basis. Texture of the media has returned to a looser mix, however more liquid is required besides what I use in blending,