Are you trying to create the perfect garden at home? If the answer is yes, then check out this fun item you can pick up for free at your local coffee shop!

Used coffee grounds. That's right, I said used coffee grounds. Back in my days working at Starbucks, I used to get requests all the time for our bags of used coffee grounds. At first, I thought there were actual people out there who tried to re-use coffee grounds to make coffee at home. Turns out, some of our smartest customers were using the grounds for fertilizer in their gardens. Not only did it save them money – no more bagged fertilizer at the local gardening store – but they also ended up with a garden smelling like fresh, rich coffee.

Let's play pretend for a second and say I have my own garden, to accompany my Malibu beach house that I share with Ryan Gosling (hey, I said PRETEND). I would head down to my local café and ask them for their coffee grounds.

Your barista will thank you for it. Trust me, nothing is less fun than carrying 40 pounds of wet coffee grounds to the garbage dumpster in the back of the shop. You will be doing them a favor, as well as yourselves.

If you do take my advice with the coffee grounds, it's always nice to pay your barista back with a nice basket of tomatoes, squash or eggplant that was freshly picked from your vegetable garden. Makes the barista feel appreciated for doing their part in helping you save the environment.

So, there you go. Used coffee grounds make excellent fertilizer, it's free, it helps the environment by recycling the coffee, and you are able to grow fresh organic vegetables from the comfort of your own home, AND your barista gets a basket of fresh vegetables as a thank you gift for helping you out. Everybody wins!