An important challenge when starting a garden, any garden, is to build up the soil.

Adding organic matter is usually the first step, and compost is the first choice, either home made or purchased. Second choices for a soil amendment include grass clippings, or leaves, or kitchen waste or most anything else you can get your hands on that will, in time, decompose and add organic mater without attracting animals or garden pests.

There’s one second choice that particularly appeals to me. It’s an excellent organic material, always finely ground so it mixes well and rots fast, is produced in large quantities in many places. And it’s free, but it’s just usually thrown away in the garbage, wasted!

Coffee grounds! Think of the enormous amounts produced every day by coffee shops as well as all other kinds of eateries, everywhere, and just chucked.

I’ve had no problem finding a local Stewart’s store that lets me pick up their output every day, almost a five-gallon bucket full. The coffee filters are inextricably included, which is fine. This shop has even been willing (on most days) to abandon their usual practice of dumping other trash/garbage in the same container they use for the grounds. (I don’t know how many other store managers would be willing to change their habits for me!)

But since they’re saving the grounds for me, I have to show up every day, so it had to be either a shop close by, or one I go by on a daily basis.

And I love the smell of the (Stewart’s) coffee in my car!

About the author: Don and Nancy White live in a passive solar house in Rexford, and are building a new home that combines active and passive solar technology. The house will also conserve water by collecting rain water and storing it in a underground cistern for irrigation, toilet and indoor utility use. Avid gardeners, the Whites have many vegetable, herb and flower beds to add compost to.

For more information on composting, click here.

Schenectady County residents can get free compost from the County Farm at 24 Hetcheltown Road in Glenville. For more information, click here.

Do you have composting tips to share with Greenpoint readers? Know any good sources of composting materials? You can comment in the box below, or e-mail your comments to greenpoint@dailygazette.net.