The raw materials are collected within less than 2 km of the place of production with a view to reducing the ecological footprint. Deliveries and mailings are grouped possible after that same desire to reduce the collective ecological footprint.
This kit makes it easy to grow gourmet mushrooms recovered from coffee grounds. Simple as Open, Water, Picking. Developed with respect for the environment and human health, our kits are free of fertilizers and pesticides.
A cultured mycelium kit can produce up to 1 pound and a half of fresh mushrooms during two months of production, and then inoculate up to 5 times its weight
many organic household wastes into a source of food as mushroom substrate!
Tons and tons of coffee grounds are wasted in our landfills each year. This proves that food can be produced using this waste product. Not only does it keep this valuable resource out of our landfills, but the mushrooms also neutralize the caffeine in the grounds.
Once again the process is low cost and not labor intensive. The spawn was just simply mixed into the coffee grounds and left to grow on it’s own. I can see a real use for these mushrooms in poor countries with shortages of food, and plenty of waste.
- See more at: http://www.montanamushrooms.com/2009/06/22/oyster-mushrooms-on-coffee-grounds-2/#sthash.ZOy5Ew7W.dpuf
Step by Step Instructions: Growing Mushrooms on Coffee Grounds
1. Take your clean bucket and add some coffee grounds
2. Sprinkle some spawn on top (crumble it up if it has clumped together) until you have roughly the same amount of spawn as coffee grounds in your bucket
3. Mix the spawn and grounds thoroughly
4. Sprinkle a 1cm layer of coffee grounds on top
5. Lightly compress the coffee/spawn mix
6. Replace the lid tightly and securly.
7. Place the bucket in a warm, dark place (18-25 degrees C – under a bed or in an airing cupboard)
8. Keep an eye on your bucket and mist the surface lightly with water if It looks like it may be drying out
9. Wait…The white fluffy stuff is mycelium – this is the mushroom spreading across the grounds as it feeds and grows.
10. When you see the white mycelium begin to spread onto the top of the grounds in your bucket you can add a thin layer of coffee grounds – make sure the grounds are fresh
11. Keep adding to your bucket until it is full or you run out of coffee
12. Mist twice daily for 2-3 weeks until you start to see pinheads (tiny little mushrooms) beginning to pop out from the surface.
13. Move your bucket into a spot with plenty of fresh air (but not draughty) and a little light (not direct sunlight).
14. Keep misting and wait until your bucket is covered with delicious mushrooms!
Growing Hints and Tips
When you start, your bucket won’t be very full. You can add more coffee grounds as the myceilum (those fluffy white bits) grow. Don’t overwhelm the mycelium with too much coffee – if there is too much coffee for the mycelium to colonise, mold will take hold instead.
If you see any patches of mold (green mold is common on coffee grounds) you can try sprinkling a little salt on the mold. If it does spread through the bucket you will have to start again (try using a higher ratio of spawn to coffee).
Harvest your mushrooms when the caps begin to turn upwards. Cut a clump of mushrooms off at the base rather than pulling or breaking them.
It is VERY IMPORTANT that you use either rain water, melted snow, or BOILED and cooled tap water. If you use regular tap water that has not been boiled, the chlorine, flouride, and other chemical contaminants in the tap water could reduce yields or prevent them altogether. So make sure that you are giving the mycelium the type of water that they need! Well water will work too, since it is derived from ground or rain water that hopefully doesn’t have any chemical contaminants in it. Mist the mushrooms enough to make the surface of the mycelium glisten; too much water that pools on the surface is probably bad.
Remember, mushrooms like warm, damp, humid conditions – they are a quite delicate and do need ideal conditions to grow well.
Enthused by the idea of growing gourmet mushrooms at home, eager to taste the incomparable freshness that only a culture kit can give you, you joined the adventure and question mycelium bag now your gaze to know when will he decide to offer its first mushrooms.
Used Coffee Grounds (UCG) have been used on plants and in compost for hundreds of years.
Somewhere along the way most of us gave it away, stopped growing our own food, and relied on an increasingly effective industrialised effort to provide food to the table.
Most of us are totally dependant on food production systems which exclude us from all but the final step of consumption – We buy and consume only the end products, and if for whatever reason the shelves become empty, the only thing left to do is starve.
I wanted some measure of control over how my food is produced, while appreciating the environmental footprint of doing it.
The first step was to start improving the quality of my soil through compost, fertilizer, and vermicast. This is when I discovered an almost limitless and cost free additive to all three of those crucial soil amendments – Used Coffee Grounds.
Since March 2010, I have collected over 2 tonnes of used coffee grounds, and it has all been used in my compost bin, dug into raised garden beds, around the base of fruit trees, liberally sprinkled over the lawn, or handed out to family and neighbours.
Unless you had heard of, or used coffee grounds in your garden, you might think it all weird. As we go through some of the environmental benefits and physical properties of the material, it quickly makes sense why more of us should be making use of it. As the hundreds of YouTube videos attest to, this knowledge is enjoying a digital age revival.
Reducing Landfill by Using Coffee GroundsApproximately 20 grams of coffee grounds remains every time an espresso machine is used, which is then typically thrown into the bin, and ends up in landfill.
20 grams might not seem like a big amount, until you consider that 5000 lattes work out to about 100 kilos of used grounds, 50,000 lattes work out to about 1 tonne.
Think about the millions of people who stop into cafes or use an espresso machine at home at least once a day. All those tens of millions of drinks make for many tonnes of landfill each and every day.
Given there is so much of the stuff being generated, availability is not an issue.
Most cafe owners would be more than happy to put some coffee grounds aside for you if you ask.
One chain that actively provides this service is Starbucks, who have an initiative known as ‘Grounds for your Garden’, and if you have been in their stores over the past five years may have noticed a stack of 2 kilo bags sitting in a basket at the front of the counter.
Another way to get supply, and one of the things I do, is to arrange to collect coffee grounds generated at work.
My building has at least 5 espresso machines which are emptied daily, and all the used grounds are left for me in a room in the basement car park.
It took a couple of tries to get the process working, but now I’m collecting around 100 Kilos per week, thanks to all my colleagues and their love of coffee.
What is in Coffee Grounds?There will always be variation with a natural product, and the specific contents of coffee grounds can change slightly depending on the origin of the beans, how they were roasted, ground, and used in the espresso machine (including the water that was used). These are however what you would typically expect.
Nitrogen is an abundant element in our atmosphere and when converted to a solid form is readily used by plants. Coffee grounds have a carbon to nitrogen ratio of 20 – 24:1, which is about the same as grass clippings.
The relatively high nitrogen content makes coffee grounds a ‘green’ addition to the compost bin, and a great offset against high carbon ‘brown’ additions such as leaves (60:1), straw (75:1), and cardboard (350:1).
Much of the nitrogen within coffee grounds is of a type that must first break down in the soil before the plants are able to make use of it, which makes the grounds just like a slow release fertiliser when put directly into the soil, providing ongoing nitrogen input into the garden.
Used coffee grounds (UCG) are slightly acidic, with a range typically between 6.9pH and 6.2pH.
It would be higher except that most of the acid within the beans is extracted during brewing.
For many vegetable and ornamental plants, the desirable pH range is 6.9 to 5.8. A pH level of 7.0 is considered neutral, and from there it is increasing in alkalinity.
Coffee grounds contain phosphorus and potassium (which with Nitrogen completes the macronutrients required for all plant growth), and includes magnesium (a secondary nutrient) and copper (a micronutrient), in sufficient quantities that you will not need to get these from other sources.
Coffee Grounds impact on animal lifeIn learning about organic gardening, I have come across a large number of traditional methods for controlling garden pests.
If for example, I make a solution of soap, garlic, chilli, and water to deter aphids, then that’s one less bottle of chemical poison in the environment.
Coffee grounds have long been used in gardens because of their impact in controlling pests.
When applied to the soil of your garden, coffee grounds will deter snails and slugs, which are affected by even trace elements of caffeine, but more so because they don’t like travelling over the course grounds.
I have seen a dramatic reduction in snails and slugs since using coffee grounds in the soil. If you have them in plague proportions and the above is not effective, you might want to try fresh coffee grounds, before the caffeine has been extracted.
I have seen a similar reduction with ants, and although not as troublesome as snails and slugs, they can prove damaging to seeds and seedlings when in large numbers.
Having a layer of coffee grounds acts as a barrier that ants will not readily cross, and while the effects are not as long lasting as the chemical ant barriers, they do not contain all the poisons either, and it is no trouble putting down more grounds once the first lot has broken down.
Although I have never had a problem with cats in the garden, there is some evidence to suggest that they do not like the smell of coffee grounds and will prefer to keep away from it.
One creature that does love coffee grounds is perhaps the most beneficial to the garden, these being earthworms.
From my own experience and from many others, they love the stuff, are attracted to it, and your soil will be healthier as a result.
This applies just as much to the worm farm as it does to applying it directly into the garden. Worms of all types will be more productive as a result.
Preparing your own garden soilA gardener once told me that he didn’t feed plants, he fed the soil which feeds the plants.
As long as you have good quality soil, you will have more healthy and productive plants. In addition to the result it brings to the garden, there is a great deal of satisfaction in returning a good percentage of our ‘garbage’ back into the earth.
When added to your compost bin or heap, coffee grounds will raise those internal temperatures, which speeds up decomposition, and the end result will be beautiful, black, rich compost.
The most common ingredients I use for compost now are kitchen scraps (no meat or pineapple and limited citrus), shredded cardboard and paper, coffee grounds, leaves and twigs, and any edible plants no longer being productive.
I would recommend limiting the use of coffee grounds in the worm farm or compost bin to about 25% of the total volume. The reason being is that you need a balance of ingredients with most recipes, and this is no different.
If you would rather use ground coffee as fertilizer in liquid form, add half a kilo of coffee grounds into a bucket with 10 litres or so of water, let the mixture warm up to ambient temperature, swish it all around and then apply directly onto your plants.
I have heard that this works particularly well with roses, camellias, azaleas, gardenias, hydrangeas, rhododendrons, and blueberries.
There is one final benefit; your garden will carry the aroma of freshly prepared coffee for sometime after being applied!
Ground to Ground and how you can get involved!For the Cafe or Coffee HouseFor Cafes wanting to reduce their contribution to landfill, and demonstrate to customers your environmental commitment, you will find the article ‘How a cafe turns coffee grounds to compost‘ a good place to start. When you feel ready to give it a try, we can add you to the map below, so everyone will know about it.
You are also welcome to print out copies of the Ground to Ground Brochure to give to your customers. It is an easy way of letting them know the benefits of coffee grounds, which makes giving them out easy.
FAQ
How many days must I wait before seeing the first signs of fruiting?Although some kits fructify in the days following the opening & drench the bag, you generally must count 10-15 days before seeing the primordia appear. From that moment, the mushrooms will grow to visibly, doubling in volume every day during a period spanning around five days.
When we know that it is time to harvest the mushrooms?
Throughout the meteoric growth of fungi, we observe that as the hats are gaining volume & deploy their edges unfold gradually. The ideal time to harvest occurs just before turning on themselves mushroom caps ledges. That's when the mushrooms will offer their most tender meat & their stronger flavor. The next day, when the edges will be fully returned and that oyster mushrooms have slats in the wind, it will be high time to pick them.
How we gather mushrooms?It is recommended to enter the mushroom bouquet at the base and pull gently in a light wrist rotation. If you prefer carving knife bouquets, it is strongly advisable to ensure that no part of the stem remains attached to the culture block. These rods corpses would soon dry up at best, offer a perfect gateway for competing agencies at worst.
How to store mushrooms?Oyster mushrooms can be easily dried by leaving them a few days in a dry environment. A kitchen counter or shelf radius are ample case. It is further possible to produce a dryer from almost anything if you have the soul of the handyman.
When kept in the fridge, fungi become dormant, but still need to breathe. It is best to keep them in a paper bag or in a container that allows some air exchange (even pierce a plastic zip-lock bag type or not sealing a mason jar or other container).
What if no fungus appears?First check health signs mycelium (moisture, odor & color) and initialize the new kit.
Moisture:The keystone of mushroom cultivation is moisture: the final weight of a fresh mushroom consists of 80-90% water. It is therefore necessary to ensure that the culture environment provides an ambient humidity of at least 40%, ideally 50 to 90% (the rate may be very localized and does not imply a change in the cooking bath permanent steam!)
Failing to have a digital moisture indicator, touch the mycelium (with a dirty finger lowest possible) will give a good idea of the humidity state in the block.
If the crop is dry to the touch pad, do bathe 12-24 hours so that water gorge. Then be sure to avoid it dries again avoiding prolonged exposure to direct sunlight, increase the relative humidity by the techniques of the tent of moisture, water bowl or any other strategy you seem sensible.
The Scent:The oyster mushroom mycelium has a very pleasant smell - something that suggests anise vanillée- unlike those released by organisms that could contaminate the kit.
If it smells bad, it is usually a bad sign!
Colors :The mycelium is usually pure white and like our kits crops are grown on coffee grounds, metabolites from mycelium of biological activity produce spots beige, brown or orange. These shades are normal.
If your grow kit takes bluish-green hues, pink or orange develops black moss is that it is the victim of competitor organizations. When identified early, it is possible to save the day. If we wait a few days, contaminants proliferate extremely difficult to make the conservation of culture strain.
To reset the culture kit, make it heat shocked by placing 12-24 hours in the refrigerator and then bassinez it again. She fear "the arrival of autumn" and redouble the will to grow.
When nothing worksWait at least 18 days following the last drench prior to manipulation of sizes to rush even more lazy mycelium. As long as he gives no sign of contamination or exhaustion, it will come to fruition when it has met its "winning conditions".
A way of upsetting his world is to transfer to another substrate mycelium / nutrient source. Mix it in any wood product whose paper, coffee grounds and / or tea, jute, hemp, cotton or other carbon source containing or mimicking lignin and cellulose. You can also use the mycelium to inoculate stumps, logs or hardwood logs (hardwood).
We must then rely few weeks so that the mycelium of the deployment is complete. We can then repeat steps from the beginning (cold soaking and then maintaining a good humidity) with amounts of mycelium will be tenfold. If these detours are testing the limits of your interest in growing mushrooms, see our exchange policy.
Grounds in the GardenCoffee grounds are a quick, easy way to add nutrients and organic matter to your soil. They are a great source of nitrogen that your plants will love! Add grounds directly to the soil – dig them in a couple inches or just sprinkle on top. Or, put grounds into your compost bin – they’ll heat everything up in no time!
You can also drop off grounds for your local park, community garden, or farmer.
Did you know that:*
The image below is of our humble little 120 litre bin for collecting coffee grounds in the CBW complex. I sticky taped one of the Ground to Ground brochures on the top for easy identification. When the cleaning crews arrive to the basement with their trolleys loaded with rubbish bags, some of them will have those freshly used coffee grounds in them, along with some paper wipes, tea bags, banana peels, apple cores, ETC. It will be mostly coffee grounds however, and those other items are a welcome addition to the compost in any case.
And sitting next to one of the dumpsters with all the general building waste. Our little coffee grounds bin looks very small in comparison doesn’t it.
Now the hard work for collecting coffee grounds from the office is done, what’s next?Well folks, my suggestion is that you do this solo, or with a small group for at least a month. That will give you the time to work through any issues that will arise, and I can assure you that at the beginning things are going to go wrong. There is nothing wrong with that, all that matters is that you fix the problem, or process, or output (depending on your point of view), and keep moving ahead.
I don’t think I could have gotten to this stage without going through this trial period, and just think about how much you will know about collecting coffee grounds when you get around to talking to groups about it.
That should do it for now friends, I will follow up shortly with Part 2 (Coffee Grounds Collecting at the Office – Getting Interest), all about getting the communications out there to potential coffee ground converts, or as I now like to refer to them -Grounders!!
OMGrow
Turning waste coffee grounds into Oyster Mushrooms
OM:farm venture is tackling 3 problems : reducing waste, food miles and Co2
Reducing food miles to food meters. OM:farm diverts what is traditionally considered waste products, multiplies their use, while focusing on inspiring and providing opportunity within local communities . Through cultivating a network of OM:farm projects we hope to help initiate social changes that will improve the livelihood and livability of our communities.
The Problem with waste coffee
Coffee is one of the largest globally traded commodities, yet only 1% of the plant biomass ends up in the cup after the final brew process at the point of sale in catering. With today's dwindling resources and increasingly complex food system it's important to minimise the waste of nutrients. Ireland consumed over 3,980 tonnes of coffee during 2012, these figures are set to increase year on year, with the bulk of coffee waste ending up in landfill where it often breaks down to produce harmful methane gases.
Where organic recycling facilities do exist, the grounds are fed into a Biodigester (use of anaerobic digestion), but this misses the opportunity to produce a high value food crop from them first, utilising the vast majority of the nutrients extracted from the soil during the growth stage of the coffee plant, the waste grounds themselves are still packed with nutrients and are the perfect growing medium for Oyster mushrooms. We fully utilise the nutrient value of the grounds by turning them into a nutritious food crop. Put simply, the full nutrient value of coffee is not being utilised.
Over 350,000 tonnes of organic waste comes from commercial businesses (e.g. food retail, hotels, food wholesale, hospitals, restaurants, etc.) and over 450,000 tonnes is generated by the industrial food producing sector. The Waste Management (Food Waste) Regulations 2009 govern any businesses that sells or serves food. According to these regulations food waste from specified premises must be segregated at source since 1st July 2010.
Coffee is one of the world's most popular drinks. 7.5 million tons of coffee and almost the same amount of waste are produced every year. These leftovers can be used for the production of healthy gourmet mushrooms. The idea for this sustainable business model stems from Africa where people are empowered to supply themselves with important nutrients and create jobs through mushroom production.
OM:farm venture is tackling 3 main problems by reducing waste, food miles and Co2.
International Food miles contribute greatly to Ireland's carbon footprint. Growing local food from local waste resources can reduce this and provide employment, training, well-being and hyper locally-grown food. This social enterprise adds benefit to the community by recruiting local people who can carry out a training program alongside growing fresh mushrooms, assembling grow at home kits, running educational workshops and events, creating a location for further food enterprise progress. Together it forms an innovative social venture that will bring great benefits economically, environmentally and socially. Our aim is to keep coffee waste out of landfill by using it to grow gourmet mushrooms, produce fertile compost and enable others to grow their food.
A perfect example of delivering on the triple bottom line, financially, environmentally & socially.
This kit makes it easy to grow gourmet mushrooms recovered from coffee grounds. Simple as Open, Water, Picking. Developed with respect for the environment and human health, our kits are free of fertilizers and pesticides.
A cultured mycelium kit can produce up to 1 pound and a half of fresh mushrooms during two months of production, and then inoculate up to 5 times its weight
many organic household wastes into a source of food as mushroom substrate!
Tons and tons of coffee grounds are wasted in our landfills each year. This proves that food can be produced using this waste product. Not only does it keep this valuable resource out of our landfills, but the mushrooms also neutralize the caffeine in the grounds.
Once again the process is low cost and not labor intensive. The spawn was just simply mixed into the coffee grounds and left to grow on it’s own. I can see a real use for these mushrooms in poor countries with shortages of food, and plenty of waste.
- See more at: http://www.montanamushrooms.com/2009/06/22/oyster-mushrooms-on-coffee-grounds-2/#sthash.ZOy5Ew7W.dpuf
Step by Step Instructions: Growing Mushrooms on Coffee Grounds
1. Take your clean bucket and add some coffee grounds
2. Sprinkle some spawn on top (crumble it up if it has clumped together) until you have roughly the same amount of spawn as coffee grounds in your bucket
3. Mix the spawn and grounds thoroughly
4. Sprinkle a 1cm layer of coffee grounds on top
5. Lightly compress the coffee/spawn mix
6. Replace the lid tightly and securly.
7. Place the bucket in a warm, dark place (18-25 degrees C – under a bed or in an airing cupboard)
8. Keep an eye on your bucket and mist the surface lightly with water if It looks like it may be drying out
9. Wait…The white fluffy stuff is mycelium – this is the mushroom spreading across the grounds as it feeds and grows.
10. When you see the white mycelium begin to spread onto the top of the grounds in your bucket you can add a thin layer of coffee grounds – make sure the grounds are fresh
11. Keep adding to your bucket until it is full or you run out of coffee
12. Mist twice daily for 2-3 weeks until you start to see pinheads (tiny little mushrooms) beginning to pop out from the surface.
13. Move your bucket into a spot with plenty of fresh air (but not draughty) and a little light (not direct sunlight).
14. Keep misting and wait until your bucket is covered with delicious mushrooms!
Growing Hints and Tips
When you start, your bucket won’t be very full. You can add more coffee grounds as the myceilum (those fluffy white bits) grow. Don’t overwhelm the mycelium with too much coffee – if there is too much coffee for the mycelium to colonise, mold will take hold instead.
If you see any patches of mold (green mold is common on coffee grounds) you can try sprinkling a little salt on the mold. If it does spread through the bucket you will have to start again (try using a higher ratio of spawn to coffee).
Harvest your mushrooms when the caps begin to turn upwards. Cut a clump of mushrooms off at the base rather than pulling or breaking them.
It is VERY IMPORTANT that you use either rain water, melted snow, or BOILED and cooled tap water. If you use regular tap water that has not been boiled, the chlorine, flouride, and other chemical contaminants in the tap water could reduce yields or prevent them altogether. So make sure that you are giving the mycelium the type of water that they need! Well water will work too, since it is derived from ground or rain water that hopefully doesn’t have any chemical contaminants in it. Mist the mushrooms enough to make the surface of the mycelium glisten; too much water that pools on the surface is probably bad.
Remember, mushrooms like warm, damp, humid conditions – they are a quite delicate and do need ideal conditions to grow well.
Enthused by the idea of growing gourmet mushrooms at home, eager to taste the incomparable freshness that only a culture kit can give you, you joined the adventure and question mycelium bag now your gaze to know when will he decide to offer its first mushrooms.
Used Coffee Grounds (UCG) have been used on plants and in compost for hundreds of years.
Somewhere along the way most of us gave it away, stopped growing our own food, and relied on an increasingly effective industrialised effort to provide food to the table.
Most of us are totally dependant on food production systems which exclude us from all but the final step of consumption – We buy and consume only the end products, and if for whatever reason the shelves become empty, the only thing left to do is starve.
I wanted some measure of control over how my food is produced, while appreciating the environmental footprint of doing it.
The first step was to start improving the quality of my soil through compost, fertilizer, and vermicast. This is when I discovered an almost limitless and cost free additive to all three of those crucial soil amendments – Used Coffee Grounds.
Since March 2010, I have collected over 2 tonnes of used coffee grounds, and it has all been used in my compost bin, dug into raised garden beds, around the base of fruit trees, liberally sprinkled over the lawn, or handed out to family and neighbours.
Unless you had heard of, or used coffee grounds in your garden, you might think it all weird. As we go through some of the environmental benefits and physical properties of the material, it quickly makes sense why more of us should be making use of it. As the hundreds of YouTube videos attest to, this knowledge is enjoying a digital age revival.
Reducing Landfill by Using Coffee GroundsApproximately 20 grams of coffee grounds remains every time an espresso machine is used, which is then typically thrown into the bin, and ends up in landfill.
20 grams might not seem like a big amount, until you consider that 5000 lattes work out to about 100 kilos of used grounds, 50,000 lattes work out to about 1 tonne.
Think about the millions of people who stop into cafes or use an espresso machine at home at least once a day. All those tens of millions of drinks make for many tonnes of landfill each and every day.
Given there is so much of the stuff being generated, availability is not an issue.
Most cafe owners would be more than happy to put some coffee grounds aside for you if you ask.
One chain that actively provides this service is Starbucks, who have an initiative known as ‘Grounds for your Garden’, and if you have been in their stores over the past five years may have noticed a stack of 2 kilo bags sitting in a basket at the front of the counter.
Another way to get supply, and one of the things I do, is to arrange to collect coffee grounds generated at work.
My building has at least 5 espresso machines which are emptied daily, and all the used grounds are left for me in a room in the basement car park.
It took a couple of tries to get the process working, but now I’m collecting around 100 Kilos per week, thanks to all my colleagues and their love of coffee.
What is in Coffee Grounds?There will always be variation with a natural product, and the specific contents of coffee grounds can change slightly depending on the origin of the beans, how they were roasted, ground, and used in the espresso machine (including the water that was used). These are however what you would typically expect.
Nitrogen is an abundant element in our atmosphere and when converted to a solid form is readily used by plants. Coffee grounds have a carbon to nitrogen ratio of 20 – 24:1, which is about the same as grass clippings.
The relatively high nitrogen content makes coffee grounds a ‘green’ addition to the compost bin, and a great offset against high carbon ‘brown’ additions such as leaves (60:1), straw (75:1), and cardboard (350:1).
Much of the nitrogen within coffee grounds is of a type that must first break down in the soil before the plants are able to make use of it, which makes the grounds just like a slow release fertiliser when put directly into the soil, providing ongoing nitrogen input into the garden.
Used coffee grounds (UCG) are slightly acidic, with a range typically between 6.9pH and 6.2pH.
It would be higher except that most of the acid within the beans is extracted during brewing.
For many vegetable and ornamental plants, the desirable pH range is 6.9 to 5.8. A pH level of 7.0 is considered neutral, and from there it is increasing in alkalinity.
Coffee grounds contain phosphorus and potassium (which with Nitrogen completes the macronutrients required for all plant growth), and includes magnesium (a secondary nutrient) and copper (a micronutrient), in sufficient quantities that you will not need to get these from other sources.
Coffee Grounds impact on animal lifeIn learning about organic gardening, I have come across a large number of traditional methods for controlling garden pests.
If for example, I make a solution of soap, garlic, chilli, and water to deter aphids, then that’s one less bottle of chemical poison in the environment.
Coffee grounds have long been used in gardens because of their impact in controlling pests.
When applied to the soil of your garden, coffee grounds will deter snails and slugs, which are affected by even trace elements of caffeine, but more so because they don’t like travelling over the course grounds.
I have seen a dramatic reduction in snails and slugs since using coffee grounds in the soil. If you have them in plague proportions and the above is not effective, you might want to try fresh coffee grounds, before the caffeine has been extracted.
I have seen a similar reduction with ants, and although not as troublesome as snails and slugs, they can prove damaging to seeds and seedlings when in large numbers.
Having a layer of coffee grounds acts as a barrier that ants will not readily cross, and while the effects are not as long lasting as the chemical ant barriers, they do not contain all the poisons either, and it is no trouble putting down more grounds once the first lot has broken down.
Although I have never had a problem with cats in the garden, there is some evidence to suggest that they do not like the smell of coffee grounds and will prefer to keep away from it.
One creature that does love coffee grounds is perhaps the most beneficial to the garden, these being earthworms.
From my own experience and from many others, they love the stuff, are attracted to it, and your soil will be healthier as a result.
This applies just as much to the worm farm as it does to applying it directly into the garden. Worms of all types will be more productive as a result.
Preparing your own garden soilA gardener once told me that he didn’t feed plants, he fed the soil which feeds the plants.
As long as you have good quality soil, you will have more healthy and productive plants. In addition to the result it brings to the garden, there is a great deal of satisfaction in returning a good percentage of our ‘garbage’ back into the earth.
When added to your compost bin or heap, coffee grounds will raise those internal temperatures, which speeds up decomposition, and the end result will be beautiful, black, rich compost.
The most common ingredients I use for compost now are kitchen scraps (no meat or pineapple and limited citrus), shredded cardboard and paper, coffee grounds, leaves and twigs, and any edible plants no longer being productive.
I would recommend limiting the use of coffee grounds in the worm farm or compost bin to about 25% of the total volume. The reason being is that you need a balance of ingredients with most recipes, and this is no different.
If you would rather use ground coffee as fertilizer in liquid form, add half a kilo of coffee grounds into a bucket with 10 litres or so of water, let the mixture warm up to ambient temperature, swish it all around and then apply directly onto your plants.
I have heard that this works particularly well with roses, camellias, azaleas, gardenias, hydrangeas, rhododendrons, and blueberries.
There is one final benefit; your garden will carry the aroma of freshly prepared coffee for sometime after being applied!
Ground to Ground and how you can get involved!For the Cafe or Coffee HouseFor Cafes wanting to reduce their contribution to landfill, and demonstrate to customers your environmental commitment, you will find the article ‘How a cafe turns coffee grounds to compost‘ a good place to start. When you feel ready to give it a try, we can add you to the map below, so everyone will know about it.
You are also welcome to print out copies of the Ground to Ground Brochure to give to your customers. It is an easy way of letting them know the benefits of coffee grounds, which makes giving them out easy.
FAQ
How many days must I wait before seeing the first signs of fruiting?Although some kits fructify in the days following the opening & drench the bag, you generally must count 10-15 days before seeing the primordia appear. From that moment, the mushrooms will grow to visibly, doubling in volume every day during a period spanning around five days.
When we know that it is time to harvest the mushrooms?
Throughout the meteoric growth of fungi, we observe that as the hats are gaining volume & deploy their edges unfold gradually. The ideal time to harvest occurs just before turning on themselves mushroom caps ledges. That's when the mushrooms will offer their most tender meat & their stronger flavor. The next day, when the edges will be fully returned and that oyster mushrooms have slats in the wind, it will be high time to pick them.
How we gather mushrooms?It is recommended to enter the mushroom bouquet at the base and pull gently in a light wrist rotation. If you prefer carving knife bouquets, it is strongly advisable to ensure that no part of the stem remains attached to the culture block. These rods corpses would soon dry up at best, offer a perfect gateway for competing agencies at worst.
How to store mushrooms?Oyster mushrooms can be easily dried by leaving them a few days in a dry environment. A kitchen counter or shelf radius are ample case. It is further possible to produce a dryer from almost anything if you have the soul of the handyman.
When kept in the fridge, fungi become dormant, but still need to breathe. It is best to keep them in a paper bag or in a container that allows some air exchange (even pierce a plastic zip-lock bag type or not sealing a mason jar or other container).
What if no fungus appears?First check health signs mycelium (moisture, odor & color) and initialize the new kit.
Moisture:The keystone of mushroom cultivation is moisture: the final weight of a fresh mushroom consists of 80-90% water. It is therefore necessary to ensure that the culture environment provides an ambient humidity of at least 40%, ideally 50 to 90% (the rate may be very localized and does not imply a change in the cooking bath permanent steam!)
Failing to have a digital moisture indicator, touch the mycelium (with a dirty finger lowest possible) will give a good idea of the humidity state in the block.
If the crop is dry to the touch pad, do bathe 12-24 hours so that water gorge. Then be sure to avoid it dries again avoiding prolonged exposure to direct sunlight, increase the relative humidity by the techniques of the tent of moisture, water bowl or any other strategy you seem sensible.
The Scent:The oyster mushroom mycelium has a very pleasant smell - something that suggests anise vanillée- unlike those released by organisms that could contaminate the kit.
If it smells bad, it is usually a bad sign!
Colors :The mycelium is usually pure white and like our kits crops are grown on coffee grounds, metabolites from mycelium of biological activity produce spots beige, brown or orange. These shades are normal.
If your grow kit takes bluish-green hues, pink or orange develops black moss is that it is the victim of competitor organizations. When identified early, it is possible to save the day. If we wait a few days, contaminants proliferate extremely difficult to make the conservation of culture strain.
To reset the culture kit, make it heat shocked by placing 12-24 hours in the refrigerator and then bassinez it again. She fear "the arrival of autumn" and redouble the will to grow.
When nothing worksWait at least 18 days following the last drench prior to manipulation of sizes to rush even more lazy mycelium. As long as he gives no sign of contamination or exhaustion, it will come to fruition when it has met its "winning conditions".
A way of upsetting his world is to transfer to another substrate mycelium / nutrient source. Mix it in any wood product whose paper, coffee grounds and / or tea, jute, hemp, cotton or other carbon source containing or mimicking lignin and cellulose. You can also use the mycelium to inoculate stumps, logs or hardwood logs (hardwood).
We must then rely few weeks so that the mycelium of the deployment is complete. We can then repeat steps from the beginning (cold soaking and then maintaining a good humidity) with amounts of mycelium will be tenfold. If these detours are testing the limits of your interest in growing mushrooms, see our exchange policy.
Grounds in the GardenCoffee grounds are a quick, easy way to add nutrients and organic matter to your soil. They are a great source of nitrogen that your plants will love! Add grounds directly to the soil – dig them in a couple inches or just sprinkle on top. Or, put grounds into your compost bin – they’ll heat everything up in no time!
You can also drop off grounds for your local park, community garden, or farmer.
Did you know that:*
- Coffee grounds contain the three major nutrients—nitrogen, phosphorus, & potassium—that flowering and edible plants need to thrive!
- Grounds also contribute important micronutrients—magnesium, copper, and calcium— not typically found in synthetic fertilizers.
- Coffee grounds won’t burn plants, pollute groundwater, or kill soil organisms that are part of a healthy ecosystem.
- Adding grounds (up to 25% the volume of your soil) will improve soil structure in the short and long term.
- Only a small percent of the nitrogen found in coffee grounds can be used by plants immediately. Over time, microorganisms break down the organic matter, converting suspended nitrogen into a useable form. This creates a steady, slow release fertilizer that plants love!
- Coffee grounds neutralize odor, discourage visits from mischievous cats, and repel garden pests such as ants, snails, and slugs.
- Grounds have a slightly acidic pH (6.2-6.8), which many plants appreciate in Austin’s alkaline soil.
- With a carbon to nitrogen ratio of 24:1, grounds are compostable without any other additives.
- Speak with your supervisor/manager about what your idea to start collecting coffee grounds from the office. You own it, you drive it, and at the least it shows initiative. Go through all the benefits that used coffee grounds will deliver when out in the garden. What you want from your manager is endorsement of the idea and that he/she is all good with you talking with others about it, including the people that will actually make it all happen. If it is a small office with a few of you and the coffee machine then it’s going to be very easy to get started, but if not then let’s keep going.
- Speak with the Property/Facilities manager about how you want to start collecting coffee grounds from the office. You can use any or all of the information on this site to help you do that, ask them to read the Ground to Ground Primer, or use the Collecting Coffee Grounds in the Workplace Presentation. Some of the larger office buildings have a Property/Facilities team with dozens of members so you want the leader of that team to endorse the idea and then advise who in that team (or extended outsourced team), is going to help you do this. If this team also empties all the coffee grounds from those machines into the dumpsters, then you can get started straight away. Otherwise let’s keep going.
- Most office complexes outsource some part of their concierge, Facilities management, security, waste management and other functions. Companies such as Sodexo do this work on a global scale, and they would be the ones that empty all the bins, including the bins where those lovely coffee grounds are emptied into. The Property manager should be able to point you in the right direction. What you want from the outsourced company is endorsement of the idea and that they will make sure they go where you want them to. If you example you just wanted to take them home for yourself, then they might put them under the counter for you and off you go. I actually did this for a while and a fellow Grounder, Jonathan Mackley is collecting coffee grounds from the office like this right now.
- Building owners, Property managers, and companies such as Sodexo may then outsource their waste management needs. Who is responsible for making the outsourcing arrangements will depend on who owns the building, so if your business is just leasing space in the building, then you will need to find who does this for you. The company that handles waste management at our complex is Consolidated Property Services, and these are the people that will store your grounds and then help you access them. What you want from the waste management company is an agreement that the grounds are better off in your garden than in those dumpsters. Less fill for them, more vegies for you!
The image below is of our humble little 120 litre bin for collecting coffee grounds in the CBW complex. I sticky taped one of the Ground to Ground brochures on the top for easy identification. When the cleaning crews arrive to the basement with their trolleys loaded with rubbish bags, some of them will have those freshly used coffee grounds in them, along with some paper wipes, tea bags, banana peels, apple cores, ETC. It will be mostly coffee grounds however, and those other items are a welcome addition to the compost in any case.
And sitting next to one of the dumpsters with all the general building waste. Our little coffee grounds bin looks very small in comparison doesn’t it.
Now the hard work for collecting coffee grounds from the office is done, what’s next?Well folks, my suggestion is that you do this solo, or with a small group for at least a month. That will give you the time to work through any issues that will arise, and I can assure you that at the beginning things are going to go wrong. There is nothing wrong with that, all that matters is that you fix the problem, or process, or output (depending on your point of view), and keep moving ahead.
I don’t think I could have gotten to this stage without going through this trial period, and just think about how much you will know about collecting coffee grounds when you get around to talking to groups about it.
That should do it for now friends, I will follow up shortly with Part 2 (Coffee Grounds Collecting at the Office – Getting Interest), all about getting the communications out there to potential coffee ground converts, or as I now like to refer to them -Grounders!!
OMGrow
Turning waste coffee grounds into Oyster Mushrooms
OM:farm venture is tackling 3 problems : reducing waste, food miles and Co2
Reducing food miles to food meters. OM:farm diverts what is traditionally considered waste products, multiplies their use, while focusing on inspiring and providing opportunity within local communities . Through cultivating a network of OM:farm projects we hope to help initiate social changes that will improve the livelihood and livability of our communities.
The Problem with waste coffee
Coffee is one of the largest globally traded commodities, yet only 1% of the plant biomass ends up in the cup after the final brew process at the point of sale in catering. With today's dwindling resources and increasingly complex food system it's important to minimise the waste of nutrients. Ireland consumed over 3,980 tonnes of coffee during 2012, these figures are set to increase year on year, with the bulk of coffee waste ending up in landfill where it often breaks down to produce harmful methane gases.
Where organic recycling facilities do exist, the grounds are fed into a Biodigester (use of anaerobic digestion), but this misses the opportunity to produce a high value food crop from them first, utilising the vast majority of the nutrients extracted from the soil during the growth stage of the coffee plant, the waste grounds themselves are still packed with nutrients and are the perfect growing medium for Oyster mushrooms. We fully utilise the nutrient value of the grounds by turning them into a nutritious food crop. Put simply, the full nutrient value of coffee is not being utilised.
Over 350,000 tonnes of organic waste comes from commercial businesses (e.g. food retail, hotels, food wholesale, hospitals, restaurants, etc.) and over 450,000 tonnes is generated by the industrial food producing sector. The Waste Management (Food Waste) Regulations 2009 govern any businesses that sells or serves food. According to these regulations food waste from specified premises must be segregated at source since 1st July 2010.
Coffee is one of the world's most popular drinks. 7.5 million tons of coffee and almost the same amount of waste are produced every year. These leftovers can be used for the production of healthy gourmet mushrooms. The idea for this sustainable business model stems from Africa where people are empowered to supply themselves with important nutrients and create jobs through mushroom production.
OM:farm venture is tackling 3 main problems by reducing waste, food miles and Co2.
International Food miles contribute greatly to Ireland's carbon footprint. Growing local food from local waste resources can reduce this and provide employment, training, well-being and hyper locally-grown food. This social enterprise adds benefit to the community by recruiting local people who can carry out a training program alongside growing fresh mushrooms, assembling grow at home kits, running educational workshops and events, creating a location for further food enterprise progress. Together it forms an innovative social venture that will bring great benefits economically, environmentally and socially. Our aim is to keep coffee waste out of landfill by using it to grow gourmet mushrooms, produce fertile compost and enable others to grow their food.
A perfect example of delivering on the triple bottom line, financially, environmentally & socially.
OMGrowbox WHITE Arriving March 2016
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OMGrowbox PINK Arriving October 2016
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OMGrowbox YELLOW Arriving October 2016
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