Hello all! I'm interested to hear anything you might know about
coffee grounds as a substrate. The
permie mindset, as we know, is to use what you have, and my day job is at a coffee shop! I could take home gallons of grounds per day just from espresso machines, more if I take the filters as well after
drip brews. The other resource from my workplace is
cardboard: we get warehouse deliveries every week, so I could take home a fat stack of flattened boxes any Thursday. I've heard some iffy comments on pure grounds being too acid/nitrogen-heavy to fruit well, but wouldn't the cardboard, a "brown", balance that a bit?
The plan that is forming in my brain is to try inoculating trays or bins with a lasagna-style layering of grounds and cardboard. I'd mix the grounds, naturally rather clean, with spawn, and pour
hot water over each layer of cardboard to soak and reduce contaminants. Let it cool a bit, then stack. I'm hoping to do this indoors.
Since this is all far from proper sterile procedure, I know it would need an aggressive species, so I'm looking at wine caps first, oysters second. I started two outdoor beds of each this past summer, and got small flushes from them in spite of using
wood chips that were heavily colonized already by something else - inky caps, I think. (I'd still buy fresh spawn instead of trying to harvest from these young, compromised beds. Just illustrating their competitive nature.)
In conclusion, has anyone done or heard of a successful grow like this?
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