An equal mix of greens and browns should give you a problem free bin.
But remember the greater the variety of ingredients you use the more balanced your finished compost will be.
The greens from the garden
- Old bedding plants
- Soft prunings
- Grass cuttings – don’t add in a thick layer, better to add them with brown materials like leaves, hedge trimmings or cardboard
- Weeds: Do not use weeds in seed and avoid pernicious weeds like bindweed, ground elder and docks
- Nettles: Nettles act as a compost accelerator but do not use roots
- Crop debris: Brassicas are tough plants that may need to be chopped or shredded. Also, be aware that old potatoes may sprout in your bin!
- Flower dead heads
From the household
- Fruit skins and cores
- Vegetable peelings
- Tea bags – make sure they are the compostable type
- Coffee grounds
- Greens from other sources
- Manure: Be careful not to over manure your heap
- Animal bedding: Only from vegetarian pets i.e. rabbits and guinea pigs
- Seaweed: If you can source it easily and are short of greens for the heap
The browns from the garden
- Twigs/sticks: Will compost more easily if shredded or chopped first
- Fallen/autumn leaves: Mix with grass cuttings to speed up composting or compost alone to make leaf mould
- Bark and shredded wood/sawdust
- Woody/tough shrubs: Will compost more easily if shredded or chopped first
- Hedge trimmings
- Straw
From the household
- Envelopes – minus the windows
- Scrunched paper: Best to use paper not suitable for recycling
- Wood ash
- Cardboard – i.e. toilet/kitchen rolls, cereal packets
- Hair and nail clippings
- Egg shells – crushed up
What not to compost
As a rule of thumb you can’t compost materials that have never lived e.g plastics and metals. Remember – you need to be mindful that you are creating a resource that benefits the soil and some care is required when adding content to the bin.
Here is a list of materials that are high risk for composting but with some added solutions as to what you can do with the offending items:
Persistent weeds
e.g. docks, couch grass, bindweed, ground elder. Do not add to small heaps or dalek bins as they will infect your compost. You can place them in a black plastic bag to exclude all light which will eventually kill them before adding to the bin. It’s also possible to drown them by placing in a hessian sack in a bucket of water, leave for a few weeks, use the water as a plant feed (it will be smelly but full of nutrients), the plant vestiges can then be safely composted.
Weeds in seed
Use the above methods to get rid of weeds in seed
Diseased plants
plants suffering from white rot, club root, blighted potato tubers (blighted leaves can be composted). Also plants that have mildews and moulds that could survive the composting process. Some gardeners suggest you should carefully burn diseased plants.
Coal ash
contains sulphur and large amounts will poison the compost and then your soil.
Cooked food, meat and fish
could attract vermin – see Wormeries for how to deal with composting these types of waste
Dog & cat faeces
These contain parasitic worms.
Man-made fibres
contain chemicals and materials alien to soils, never put in the compost heap.
Metal, plastics, glass
use your local recycling facilities.
