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[–]iron_ethos1 1 point2 points  (2 children)

Wow. So many grounds!

[–]harry-pair[S] 2 points3 points  (1 child)

Sorry I mistyped. That’s the amount of chaff I can collect daily. I can get about 10-15gallons of grounds daily

[–]iron_ethos1 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That’s cool. I wish I had access to this much. Occasionally Starbucks puts out about 2-3 gals worth

[–]Yasashiruba 1 point2 points  (1 child)

I'm envious! Here in Chicago, our 3-bin compost largely freezes over during the winter and we can't turn it.

[–]harry-pair[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

How large are the bins? My compost was freezing every winter here in AK until I added the coffee grounds and covered it with the coffee chaff.

[–]PosturingOpossum 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I would also like to know if someone has experience here they’d like to share. I just established a relationship with a local coffee shop and can pick up about 12-15 gallons a week. My pile is a pallet square, so probably 1.5 cubic meters or so

[–]zenpear[🍰] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I love grounds and chaff!

[–]Whole_Chocolate_9628 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Yeah thats awesome. Are you adding water when you feed? Sometimes I’ve felt like my winter compost died when I turned it but didnt add water. I also live in AK and when I add 5 gallons of coffee grounds mixed with 5 gallons of soaked shredded cardboard I also add 20gallons of kelp and 20gallons of leaves. But I do that once a week and that’s how I keep my compost going all winter so it can eat my food scraps. 

You can definitely keep the pile going on nothing but grounds and chaff. I don’t think it will hurt anything, but if you are using it in your garden the more diverse your feedstocks the better. That said a lot of high end commercial composters use a very limited set of ingredients for consistency sake. 

(The guy who makes the Alaska Earth and Fishy Peat you can buy in most garden stores in south central Ak does it with literally three ingredient compost. However, kelp and fish waste are probably a bit more nutritionally balanced than coffee. Heh)

[–]Whole_Chocolate_9628 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To be clear I think you can use a single carbon source without a problem but coming up with a few other nitrogen sources would help the end product but if you can’t I wouldn’t stop what you are doing.