gaining grounds

it was from one of our medical representatives that i first heard of the idea of coffee grounds for your garden. we were in the middle of a sales meeting when she just had to stop it just to tell me her latest discovery. i believe she saw it on tv as celebrities use starbucks coffee grounds as body scrubs but knowing i'm into gardening, she shared this "grounds for your garden" project by starbucks. the project was introduced in 1995, offering free bags of used coffee grounds to enrich garden soil.

thyme seeds covered
with coffee ground mulch

i've been gardening for a few months now and was delighted by this information. living in the suburbs has its limitations, good soil is hard to find that i had to buy soil alternatives to start my small garden. i dropped by a local starbucks and found a basket on the entrance that has a "grounds for your garden" sign on it. unfortunately, the basket is empty. someone already took them. on my next visit to starbucks, the one in paseo de magallanes, i looked around and found no baskets. i ordered our coffee and asked for some used grounds. the counter lady then said she would hand them over to me later. we finished our cups and finished our stories but the grounds never came. i asked another staff for the grounds and was surprised as she handed me a whole garbage bag full of coffee grounds. i thought it was a joke at first as i imagined they only give small bags of the grounds. it was only when she handed me the big black bag that i found out she was serious. it was heavy to say the least that someone had to help me bring the bag out of the coffee shop.

this morning, i woke up smelling coffee in my room. felt like i woke up in a coffee shop. and since it's a holiday, i started working on my garden. it was awesome to think that i'm spreading starbucks coffee on my plants. feels like i'm treating them cups of the famous coffee company. but it was really great to think that i got the grounds for free and that starbucks are thinking if ways to recycling their waste products. i hope that other coffee companies do the same.

doings a little bit of research, i found some other uses for the coffee grounds aside from using it as compost or mulch:

• skin exfoliant (scrub) 
• fridge deodorizer
• hair shine solution
• pet grooming 
• insect repellant 
• cellulite reducer

just look it up in the net if you want exact procedures from the uses above.