This morning as I got into my car to go to work, I saw a big crow zoom out of the silver maple and up over the roof of our house. I just barely caught a glimpse of something small and blue held in its beak - probably a robin's egg. I have a lot of respect for the intelligence and adaptability of crows, but I would like them better if they weren't egg-robbers and baby-bird-eaters.
I brought a plastic jar to work, put it near the sink, and posted a sign over it: "Be Green, Recycle Your Coffee Grounds Here". I'm delighted that the coffee-making folks of the lab are obliging me! The idea is to collect coffee grounds for the compost pile. Whyfore, other than to rescue them from the landfill? Having finished a graduate school degree wherein I learned a fair amount about ecological stoichiometry, I'm not sure if it's ironic or simply fitting that I now find myself thinking about carbon:nitrogen ratios when I think about composting. A compost pile made solely of materials with a high C:N ratio - think dry leaves and sawdust - will break down very slowly, and if it's used before it is well broken down, it will actually strip nitrogen from the soil to which it's added. A compost heap with a lot of high-nitrogen materials will heat up nicely, but will be stinky. Since our backyard provides abundant leaves every fall, we have a surplus of high-carbon stuff; coffee grounds have a C:N ratio of 20:1, which helps to balance out the dry leaves' ratio of 60:1. The 'ideal' compost heap has something like a 30:1 ratio. I'm nerdy enough to have looked this up, but not nerdy enough to try to calculate the exact ratios of my compost bins. I'm more of the "guesstimate, see how it works out" philosophy.
Thursday, May 28, 2009
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3 comments:
I always found that the coffee grounds really helped - and so did tea bags. But I never calculated anything for mine either. I just would go and see if it was wet/dry stinky or not and then try to adjust. I can't wait until I can have one in a new yard.
Cool
I, too, have never calculated the C:N ratio of my compost, but, I, too think about it. You are not alone in your nerdiness. (I really love C:N ratios and my students really don't. That' a shock.)
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