Used coffee grounds are my favorite 'green'. Fresh cut grass is my other favorite green, but it is not available year-round as the grounds are. Starbucks can provide a 100 pounds a week, if you collect them properly. That means you get on good enough terms with the employees to have them understand you will be glad to take ALL the grounds they can provide. Otherwise they will give you one bag a visit. I have not been in the store in three years. My hatchback contains a couple of Rubbermaids and a long-forked tool to grasp the knot in the grounds bag. It takes practice to get the bag out without ripping it open, even with two bags used. The bag is lifted out of the dumpster into the Rubbermaid container. If any grounds or trash are spilled on the ground, they are cleaned up with a brush and tray. Starbucks does not directly encourage gardeners to collect out of the dumpster, and one has the responsibility to leave the dumpster as one finds it. On one visit to the store, no grounds were available and I asked if I could look in the dumpster. Five bags were in it, and on future visits I never went back in the store for fear that some legal-minded employee would tell me differently. Interestingly, the grounds in the dumpster are more to my liking than the bags the employees give you. The higher moisture content means they do not clump up the way the espresso grounds do. On the other hand, the bags of loose grounds and filters found in the dumpster also have trash in them. The average person who goes into Starbucks and is given a bag of grounds (some of the new fancy silver bags only hold about seven pounds of used grounds) probably is not aware that Starbucks trashes 70-90% of used grounds (my estimate) Seven-bin Bob

You should expect that your pile will cool down eventually. It's also tricky to get your compost finished if you're regularly adding things after the bulk of the material is broken down. If you still have recognizable things in the pile, then it's not quite done. I would guess that if you still have oak leaves that aren't broken down, you may need yet more greens to get those going...but you may never see heavy cooking again if most of the stuff is pretty much done. I might stop adding things to this pile (start another one, or start stockpiling), but keep turning now and again and see if the remainder will break down. If the other not-yet-broken-down stuff is mostly greens, I would definitely take this approach. If it's not 100% done when you're ready to use it, you could sift it or pick through it to remove the incomplete stuff. Or you could just keep waiting. Certain items are just tough to break down.

strawberry hill, your post is so interesting. I've never tested my soil but knowing that it's basically decomposed granite (in some places solid granite just 1 1/2 feet down) is a good clue. Growing the right roses for your area, as has been emphasized on this forum over and over, is in my opinion the most important lesson to learn. Having once chosen the right ones, there are still steps that can be taken, as you point out, to fine-tune the results. A lot depends on how much you can or are willing to do. I've found that coffee grounds from my husband's coffee consumption, alfalfa meal and adequate water are the simplest way for me to have good-looking roses. Judicious pruning also has its place. Poisons never will; I'd give up roses first. It's part art, part science and part the will of the roses to live and thrive. It's a little different for everyone, and it is endlessly fascinating. Ingrid

I heard that coffee grinds help to fertilize the soil and help to get rid of pests. So,I put coffee grounds on top of my soil of my tomato seedlings and they are turning an odd shade of light green and some of them have white spots on the leaves. Maybe after reading this artile I will try to scrape off the coffee grounds and then maybe integrate them into the soil later when I transplant the tomatoes into the garden if they are still alive I hope. P.S. Are there any ways to organically or naturally fertiize the soil for tomatoes? Some websites are talking about fish? You can't use tuna fish can you? Wouldn't that be salty?