I heard tell (via. Little House in the Suburbs) that if I girl were to go into Starbucks and ask them for their used grounds, they’d give them to you…. for FREE! I’d tucked this little tidbit in the back of my brain for later. Well, it turns out that “later” was today! Shawna and I stopped in to a Starbucks to see if we could get some grounds and we walked away with a 5 pound bag of the beautiful stuff. We stopped into one more on the way home and got two MORE 5 pounders.

You might be asking yourself why I would want used coffee grounds. They make wonderful, black compost. You can stick them in a composter and leave them to do their thing or you can toss them right into a garden and let all that good stuff sink in among the roots of your plants. Either way it’s totally free and it smells so good (much better than poop). Starbucks even sticks them in these nice bags and sets them by the doors for you!

The three bags we picked up in about ten minutes of driving (for once I was glad Starbucks is everywhere).

The difference between the three bags of grounds and the clay dirt we had before.

And everything all spread out! That was about 15 pounds of grounds and a 3 x 3 foot box… it looks like one of the stores didn’t bag the grounds right because they came out in a soggy nasty mess. I don’t know why that one was so full of liquid. It’ll dry out and look like the other two bags soon though.