Coffee and Newspaper Compost

Your morning newspaper and cup of coffee can do more than prep you for the day ahead: They can also help out in the yard. Instead of throwing out old newspapers and coffee grounds, recycle them as compost for the garden. And because coffee grounds and newspaper are very different kinds of compost, you can use them together to create a healthy compost mix.

Coffee grounds contain up to 2 percent nitrogen, with about the same carbon-to-nitrogen ratio of grass clippings 20 to 1. This makes them useful as green compost -- meaning nitrogen-rich -- as opposed to brown, dry materials such as sawdust and crunchy leaves that are useful in other ways. However, when they're fresh, they encourage microbes to grow in the soil and use up their nitrogen content, making it less available to plants. To balance this, you should either let coffee grounds age with other materials into crumbly, dirtlike compost over the course of three to five months or, if working them into the soil fresh and wet, apply nitrogen along with them.

As long as they're damp, coffee grounds attract pesky fruit flies, which can be nuisances even when they're just flying around your compost bin. Placing your compost in an open wire bin can help the coffee grounds dry out faster, reducing the time fruit flies flock to the compost. Also, although coffee is generally acidic and can acidify your soil, brewed coffee -- including those used-up coffee grounds -- has a neutral pH, making them perfectly safe as compost for neutral soil.

Newspaper is considered a brown compost, which means it doesn't have a moisture content as fresh coffee grounds do. However, it is high in carbon, which is necessary for microbes that turn these materials into usable compost. This means that you'll need to mix newspaper with fresh green materials; the newspaper provides carbon, while the green materials, including coffee grounds, provide nitrogen and moisture to aid in decomposition. Shred newspaper before adding it to your compost pile so that it breaks down faster.

Another way to incorporate newspaper into the composting process is by using them for a worm bin. Worms are excellent composters that eat food scraps, including coffee grounds, and eliminate them as compost. To create a worm bin for composting, tear your newspaper into strips and moisten them, and then place them on the bottom of the box as bedding. Mix in materials you want composted, such as coffee grounds, and place worms inside. You can order red worms or red wrigglers if you don't already have worms in your garden. Over the course of three to five months, the worms will turn the bin's contents from newspaper strips and coffee grounds into compost that's ready for your garden.