How to use large quantities of coffee grounds in the garden, worm farms & compost bins

Hi guys, Chris from The Ultimate Recycler. Just a quick video about coffee grounds. I have done a worm test on them a little while back and I'll put a link in this video, but this one's really just to show you how I collect them, how they come from the bakery. There's seven bags here which represents about a week's worth of coffee at our local bakery. I'll just run you through what I do with them and how I distribute them to various worm farms and spots in my garden. So I use this little crate which has openings at the bottom that will work out a really nice size as a sieve. And I've just cut the top off one of these bags here, so I'll tip it in. It's a bit hard to do this one-handed. So I empty the bags into this mainly because the bakery aren't very well trained with regards to other things going in the coffee grounds. There's often cigarette butts and little plastic containers and foil packets, English breakfast tea that one was. So these aren't going to break down, that's foil lined. So I need to sieve these out before they go into the worm farm or compost bin, otherwise it just creates a lot of litter. It's just a little receipt or a note that would probably break down. There's often tea bags in here as well which I generally leave in, but I sieve out the nice clean coffee grounds. I break up the clumps as well and when I'm running them through the sieve here I just use a bit of wood to break up these these lumps. So then we have the buckets of coffee grounds and I distribute it regularly to various worm farms. I've got also layers and compost bins and I recently put a fairly thick layer along the garden area that I wanted to keep the weeds down and then mulched it. So I'll do a video on that at some stage as well. So I've just sieved this one and as I mentioned there's all sorts of rubbish goes in here. Icy pole sticks, little plastic containers, I don't know what they were, maybe jam or veg you might single serves at the bakery, not sure. And even a latex glove. So I need to get those out otherwise though my compost bins and worm farms will start to resemble a refuse stump. And as I said I'll just use a bit of wood here and these lumps pour through pretty easily and that gives me a nice bucket full of clean coffee grounds. So this garden bed's just had a bit of a revamp. It's been used as a testing station for all sorts of things, but it's time to give it a good dig over. The last test was quite a while ago and the worms have moved on. There's still a few in here but we're getting beautiful depth to the soil here and lots of worm castings incorporated. There's quite a bit of fibrous roots here which is one of the reasons I've dug it over is that it's becoming very fertile and any nearby plants recognize that and they're sending fibrous roots into here. So it's time to give it a dig over, freshen it up and now I'll top dress it with a good thick layer of these coffee grounds and keep it damp, put the carpet back on and in a matter of a week or two the worms will be right back into this bed and having a feast. So I've put two full buckets, full to the top they were, of coffee grounds spread around on this bed and I reckon it's probably two inches thick so that'll really inject some nitrogen into this spot and I'll keep it damp. It'll take quite a while for the worms to get back in and and demolish this lot but this garden bed's sort of on its resting phase and this will just re-energize it with lots of nitrogen in the worm castings. So I won't check back here as far as this video goes. If you want to have a look how the worms get into a good thick layer of coffee grounds check the link in the top right hand corner. In the meantime this is how I process some of the grounds I get from the bakery both in the garden bed and also I'll do a layer in a compost bin shortly. Here's another garden bed I've got here that's due for a rest. This area here I've just pulled out some pumpkin bushes that had finished fruiting. We've got a good crop of pumpkins and I've put a lot more of these coffee grounds here but I've also done a layer of shredded paper underneath. So what that's going to give me is weed suppression and it will rot down and eventually the worms will get into it. Now I should have mentioned a thick layer of coffee grounds being a nitrogen source will actually heat up so you're never going to get worms into it straight away. It needs to heat up, cool down, it'll start to go moldy and then the worms will start getting in there. But this primary aim of this spot is to keep this garden bed neat until I need it again. I'm not even going to mulch over the top of this I have further down. I've put some carpet underlay further down but I'm going to leave this as it is and the coffee grounds will probably form a bit of a hard crust which should give me a barrier for weeds until I'm ready to dig it over and do something else. In the meantime the strawberries down there look like they're creeping this way so they might enjoy it after a while too. And another destination for coffee grounds just before I go is in my compost bins. Now this bin has had some a while back and you can see that there's also been some shredded paper in here but the coffee grounds once they break down and they've cooled down really become an attraction to the worms. So this compost bin I've actually just left for a while it's cooled down there's no activity as far as heat goes and there's some grass clippings as well in here but it's it's turning into beautiful soil. So that's the final use for or the other use for coffee grounds that I collect. I do layers in my compost bins and really it's a fantastic resource. Just call into any coffee shop or bakery nearby and I'm sure they'll be only too happy to let you collect them. Before I started collecting from here they used to put them straight in the skip bin every day so I'm saving landfill and I'm tapping into this great resource for my garden. Okay thanks for watching we'll do some more worm food tests soon so keep an eye on my channel if you're interested in that sort of thing.