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Comment by mjsweet | Hacker News Reader

I fell into a massive YouTube recommendation vortex two 1/2 years ago when my barista basically insisted I take all his Cafe's coffee grounds home and compost them. I had no idea how to compost (he was sick of telling customers it was going into landfill. every. single. day). I now have over 20kg's of worms spread over 30+ worm bins and I'm taking organic residue from all over the district and turning it into valuable soil amendments. I never thought 5 years ago I would now be on the cusp of leaving digital marketing and going into manufacturing soil amendments. Profoundly life changing experience.

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Any tips on getting organic material like this? We have a small market garden, and before COVID I was able to bring home buckets from the cafe at my office (Google Waterloo), but with the whole WFH situation I don't have that line anymore.

I found that a 50/50 mix of composted coffee grinds + pure sand made a great growing medium for potted peppers.

I got into this because I can work from home with 3 small children. You can feed worms anything that once alive. You could ask your neighbours to leave a bucket of scraps out the front to pick up on a given day. Tree loppers always have to figure out where to take large amounts of wood chip, ask them to drop it off at yours if you can accommodate it. It's all about context. My context in Brisbane Australia (sub-topics and suburban) will be different to Phoenix or Ontario... all it takes is some phoning around and planning. BTW, carbon sources like wood chip are easier to manage than kitchen scraps. It takes some forethought to manage scraps because it can become smelly, fast. I have been using effective microbes (EM) to pickle scraps in poly barrels for later use with incredible success. I like your 50/50 mix idea, very intriguing. On that, anyone like yourself who has a curious mind, an optimisation mindset and a desire for continuous improvement will love the micro-composting space... so much scope for experimentation!

Why did you leave? Money or fulfillment?

Fulfilment definitely... hopefully the money will follow. I think it will.

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