In a successful pile you will find friendly bugs, worms, and micro-organisms including fungi and bacteria that will do most of the decompostion work to create compost for you. The following four essential ingredients provide these creatures with the best environment to do their “work.”
A healthy compost pile will contain the “big four”
- Browns are carbon rich, dry, woody materials such as fallen leaves, hay, dried plants and weeds.
- Greens are nitrogen rich, green, moist materials such as kitchen scraps, young weeds, and grass clippings. Your "green" sources will act as the activator in your pile. See the table below for examples.
- Water your pile until it is moist but not soggy, or the dampness of a wrung-out sponge. All the creatures in your pile need water to stay alive and do their work.
- Air is necessary to stimulate decomposition, an oxidation process.
Do Compost
- Fallen Leaves - browns
- Finely chopped, woody prunings - browns
- Pine needles - browns
- Sawdust from untreated wood - browns
- Breads and Grains- greens
- Tea bags - greens
- Coffee grounds - greens
- Egg shells (better crushed or pulverized) - greens
- Lawn clippings - greens
- Young weeds (before they go to seed) - greens
- Vegetable & fruit peels and scraps - greens
- Manure from non-meat eating animals
Don't Compost
- Meat & bones
- Fish
- Dairy products
- Greasy foods
- Plywood sawdust
- Treated wood sawdust
- Glossy magazine paper
- Diseased plants
- Dog, cat, or bird feces
- Poison Oak
- Bermuda grass, ivy & rhizome grasses
- BBQ or coal ashes