[worms]
They run away from the summer heat here, too. I remember digging
for them for fish bait in midsummer as a youth. We would have to
go around and find some shady spot on the north side of a building,
where the ground stayed moist longer, to find any in the top foot of
soil. Where there was full sun, even with plants growing on top of
the soil, you could dig down two feet and not find any. (They were
still there, though, because night crawlers would come up to the
surface when it rained in summer. The varieties that can be found
at all depths in the soil had simply dug down deeper for the season.)
[coffee grounds]
http://www.sunset.com/garden/earth-f...0400000016986/
So that study estimated carbon-nitrogen ratio in coffee grounds at
24:1. Ideal compost is 25:1, so they almost balance out, to where
the coffee grounds barely add any more nitrogen than bacteria
digesting them use.
Here is a guide where you can find N-P-K percentages
on a lot of ad-hoc materials:
http://www.thegardenguy.org/html/npk.html
What that table does not tell you is what is the actual
carbon-nitrogen ratio of those materials. If you look
at chicken manure in the table, it actually has less
nitrogen than coffee grounds. But it has almost no carbon
(no undigested cellulose), so its nitrogen can practically
all be used to digest other, higher carbon materials when
it is mixed into a compost pile. And thus a pile of half leaves
and half chicken manure will heat up a great deal faster
and probably get hotter than half leaves and half coffee grounds.
That is all I was saying. I do use coffee grounds and I do not let
them go to waste, but I do not depend on them to contribute
more nitrogen than bacteria use digesting them.
You might find this "Extreme Composting" thread interesting
(it is kind of interesting simply as a saga, even if one is not really
in a position to apply any of Forerunner's techniques in one's own
garden):
http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/gen...omposting.html