We drink a lot of coffee.

There are currently five coffee drinkers in my house and two small coffee pots. We end up making about 3 pots of coffee per day, which means – and I know all you composters are thinking of this! – a lot of potential garden food in the form of used grounds.

In our front yard I have planted three dwarf mulberries, two peach trees, a persimmon and a Rachel mulberry. Seven fruit trees in lousy, gritty, pine-root infested soil.

To give them a kick for spring, I’ve instructed everyone in the house not to compost the used coffee filters and grounds in the compost pile but instead to throw them at the base of one of the front-yard fruit trees every time new coffee is made.

Let’s Do Math

There are 74 days until March 1st. Three coffee filters full of used grounds will be thrown in the front yard every day until then, for a total of 222.

222 divided by 7 fruit trees = 31.71 coffee filters full of grounds will end up at the base of each tree over the course of the cold winter months.

In spring, I will mulch over the grounds and those trees should FLY!

Coffee grounds are a very good slow-release fertilizer. When I had access to (literal) tons of used grounds from a coffee shop, I threw them around all my trees, in my compost bin and even scattered them across my lawn. Even with a more limited supply, the cumulative effect of three filters a day adds up.

Remember, you don’t have to do everything all at once. Small actions every day add up, whether it’s feeding your plants, dieting, writing a book or keeping your garden weeded.

Right now I’m trying to learn the violin. We’ll see how my out-of-tune, squeaky, repeated daily practices add up by March. Maybe I’ll be good enough by then to play a pleasant tune for my well-fed fruit trees.