What To Compost

Many people new to gardening or composting often aren't sure exactly what they should put into their compost piles or bins. Once they learn some of the basics though, they find it's much easier to create rich compost for their gardens than they may have first suspected. So let's take a look at some of the best items to include in your own compost piles or bins.

Kitchen Scraps
Anything natural that you use in the kitchen makes for wonderful additions to the compost pile. It's important that you only toss natural items into the compost pile though. You should never put meat into a compost bin for instance, or things such as milk, plastic, and tinfoil.

The best kitchen scraps to use for your composting are fruit and vegetable matter. When you cut up tomatoes for a salad for instance, save the core for your composting. If you peel potatoes for supper, save those peels too. Apple peels and cores, banana peels, left over fruit or vegetables that have started going bad, heads and cores of lettuce, and so on can all be added to your compost bin.

All of these items can be added as they are if you'd like, but they will take longer to decompose. If you'd like to speed the composting process up, you'll want to chop your fruit and vegetable waste into smaller chunks, or stick it in a blender or food processor to grind it up even smaller.

Tea and Coffee Grounds
Both used tea bags or loose tea, and used coffee grounds make wonderful additions to the compost pile. These can actually be used as fertilizer for indoor and outdoor plants too actually. Simply pour your left over coffee or tea into the watering can, or spread the used coffee and tea grounds around the base of your plants regularly.

If you want to add these to the compost bin instead though, that's easily done as well. The bags which tea grounds come in can be tossed into your compost pile as is, and if you use paper coffee ground filters then those can be tossed into the compost pile or bin as well. Keep in mind that white paper coffee filters are bleached though, so you may be more comfortable changing to unbleached ones if you'll be using your compost for fruit and vegetable plants.

Household Scraps
There are other various everyday household items that also make wonderful additions to the compost pile. These include: newspapers, fireplace ashes, wood chips or sawdust, and grass or leaf clippings.

All standard, unglossy newspaper can be added to your compost pile as is. It helps if you tear the newspaper into smaller pieces or strips though, and of course the smaller you tear it up, the faster it will decompose.

Fireplace ashes are another excellent addition to your compost pile, and these mix in and decompose very quickly. If you don't have any ashes though, you can simply toss in small wood chips or sawdust instead.

Grass and leaf clippings are also fantastic compost pile additions. Again you can shred them into smaller pieces for quicker composting, or just toss them in as is after trimming the yard, bushes, and trees.

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