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Tue, May 29, 12 at 13:49
| I just moved and need to restart composting. I have a compost tumbler but no browns. We produce plenty of greens from cooking, but I have no trees. Someone has offered me coffee chaff to use. Is that acceptable to use as the main brown? I will search for leaves in the fall at least.
Use: I have raised beds with good soil, but I'd love to add some compost, and I'd also like to put some perennials in the ground and would need to amend. |
Follow-Up Postings:
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| Thanks. I saw that earlier...I may have missed something, but I couldn't get a good idea on if the chaff would badly skew the needed makeup of the compost. |
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  This is the finished coffee chaff/coffee waste compost. Some of it is 6 months & some of it is 18 months. It has some N P K & because it is so finely ground, it compost without turning or additional waste being added. |
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| So you didn't add any veggie waste to that? Pure chaff? Is that ok to add to gardens or better for grass? I am a newbie and don't know much about soil. |
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| I'm pretty new at this too but I don't think you can screw up compost too badly ... if it's composted then it's pretty much something good :-) it may not be optimal but it won't be horrible either. |
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| It was wet when I got it & steaming. I put it down around my tomatoes & peppers,cukes, field peas,yard long beans,water melons. Do not do this, because it will crust over, as will pure coffee grounds, always mix into the soil first. It did not hurt the vegetables & made everything grow, but got hard & cracked like clay, because it lay on top of the ground.The water run into the cracks of the unfinished chaff. That is the main reason for composting first. If your chaff is not wet it will look like Spanish peanut skins or onion skins, only thinner & smaller, fluffy like snow. You can compost all coffee waste & use burlap bags for mulch, with straw & leaves on top. I composted my chaff in the bags that it came in, because it was a large amount, many dump truck loads. If you have a small amount, you can mix it with other waste. I have a sheet on it(soil test), but I have misplaced it, old age. |
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- Posted by tn_gardening (My Page) on Tue, May 29, 12 at 19:33
| steidla...So you didn't add any veggie waste to that? Pure chaff? Is that ok to add to gardens or better for grass? I am a newbie and don't know much about soil. ============ I've never used coffee chaff, but if it breaks down completely so there are no noticeable ingredients, then it'll be fine to use anywhere. Not having a good mix of greens n browns will prolong the process. Since a good deal of us want to make and use compost regularly (once or twice a year) a lot of us try to speed the process up by using more ideal ingredients and turning the pile regularly. |
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| tn_gardening is right! I did not have time to turn large bags of coffee waste & found that it was composting on it's on. That does not mean you can not mix other thing into your chaff. I mix grass clippings & leaves into the raised beds to compost in the soil. The old term for sheet composting, today sheet composting is NOT tilled under, once it was(OGM). |
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