Composting 101

Composting is rewarding and easy! Here are some dos and don'ts.

Compost pile needs air, water and food to thrive. Ideally, your pile should be as moist as a wrung-out sponge to fit the needs of compost microbes.

Generally speaking, there are two major kinds of food that composting microbes need. 'Browns' are dry and dead plant materials such as straw, dry brown weeds, leaves, wood chips and sawdust. 'Greens' are fresh (and often green) plant materials such as green weeds from the garden, kitchen fruit and vegetable scraps, green leaves, coffee grounds and tea bags, fresh horse manure, etc. Compared to browns, greens have more nitrogen in them.

There needs to be a good mix of browns and greens to provide best nutritional balance for the composting microbes.

  What to compost

  Grass/Lawn Clipping

  Fresh grass clippings are high in nitrogen, making them a 'green' compost     

  ingredient.

  Hay
  Be careful with using grass hay which will probably contain a lot of seed, which  

  can reseed in your garden. The greener the hay, the more nitrogen it contains.

Kitchen Wastes
Fruit and vegetable peels/rinds, tea bags, coffee grounds, eggshells (best if broken up), and similar materials are great stuff to compost. They tend to be high in nitrogen (this puts them in the 'greens' category). Avoid composting meat scraps, fatty food wastes, milk products, and bones -- they are very attractive to pests and take a long time to decompose.

Leaves
Dead, dry leaves are in the 'browns' category, while living green leaves are considered 'greens'.

Straw
Dry straw is a good material for helping to keep a compost pile aerated.Be sure to wet the straw, as it is very slow to decompose otherwise. Straw is a 'brown' and requires mixture with 'greens' to break down quickly.

Weeds and other garden wastes
Many types of weeds and old garden plants can be composted. Avoid weeds that have begun to go to seed , as they may survive. Some types of weeds will resprout in the compost pile -- avoid using these unless they are thoroughly dead. Green weeds are a 'green', while dead brown weeds are a 'brown'.

Wood Chips and Sawdust
Wood products are 'browns'. Be sure not to compost chips or sawdust from any sort of chemically-treated wood.

What NOT to compost

Chemically treated wood products.

Diseased plants.

Human wastes.

Meat, bones, and fatty food wastes.

Pernicious weeds.
(Morning glory/bindweed, sheep sorrel, ivy, several kinds of grasses, and some other plants can resprout from their roots and/or stems in the compost pile. Don't compost these weeds unless they are completely dead and dry.)

Pet wastes.