Did you know that allegedly you can walk into any Starbucks and request free spent coffee grounds to enrich your garden or compost? Me either! I haven’t actually tried this yet, not having a garden and all, but the company even has this whole composting/gardening section on its website. And bloggers galore confirm it.

The section offers tips to balance out coffee’s acidity when adding to soil, advising that it should be used “as a top dressing to acid loving plants like blueberries, hydrangeas, and azaleas” and should be no more than 25 percent of your compost pile. Apparently composting worms like it too. The companys says coffee grounds have nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium.

Clearly we don’t want to take the company’s word for it, so check out Sunset magazine’s independent test of Starbuck’s coffee grounds. They sent the free grounds to a lab for analysis and confirmed the mineral content, also noting that they release nitrogen as the decompose–also a good thing. And here’s a handy “how to” on using the grounds from eHow.com. They suggest first testing the ph level of your soil.

If you want to check out the benefits of coffee on yourself, check out our Health Secrets of Coffee gallery.

Do you garden or compost with coffee grounds? How does it work for you?