Compost is like liquid gold to gardener, it amends the soil and is its own form of recycling. We are big fans of composting here. You don’t need a lot of room to compost either. Even we lived in a little townhouse and only had a patio I practiced a form of composting, (much to my husband’s chagrin).
What can you Compost? the following is a list of things that I may have composted at one time or another. Note the bucket in the picture this is our "outside" compost bucket. But I will save that story for another time.
- eggshells
- leftover coffee
- coffee grounds
- vegetable peelings
- fruit cores, and seeds
- fruit peels
- leftovers – meatless ones
- paper towels (if you are using them you can reuse them)
- Leftover water from your water bottle
- junk mail (be sure to opt out of this)
- the newspaper, tear it into strips first
- the contents of your vacuum cleaner
- ashes from your fireplace – make sure they have cooled and there are no live embers in them
- cardboard boxes – tear this up too
- mistakes from baking –this hardly ever happens anymore at my house
- Plate scrapings – scrape the kids plates off into the compost bucket
- lint from the dryer
- Pet hair – you know the stuff they shed all over the floor you just vacuumed
- Tea bags and loose tea
- Dead houseplants
- Kleenex
- Moldy Cheese
- Fruit pits, olives, peach, apricot, etc.
- Mystery items in fridge (as long as meatless)
- toilet paper tubes
- Natural fiber(cotton) rags that have outlived themselves
- Cardboard egg cartons
- pencil shavings
- used matches
- Leaves raked up in the yard
- Manure from horses, and other grazing animals like goats and sheep (but not from dogs and cats)
- Hay and bedding material from gerbils, rabbits, and guinea pigs, as well as barn animals
- Grass clippings
- Weeds – make sure they have not gone to seed
- Trimmings from your plants in the garden
- Dead plants from the vegetable garden at the end of the season
This post is linked up to frugal Days Sustainable Ways, Your Green Resouce, Living Well Blog Hop, Wildcrafted Wednesday
Technorati Tags: composting,organic gardening
8 comments:
Really, you compost cheese? I have always heard that it would attract vermin. Then again, I've recently heard the same about grease, after years of composting vegetable-oily paper towels with no problems.
In your junk mail and vacuum cleaner contents, don't you sometimes have things that won't biodegrade? I'm thinking of envelope windows and any plastic debris you vacuumed. When I turn my compost, I sometimes find things that shouldn't have gone in there because they're actually plastic, like the stickers on fruit peels.
I have been composting all my life. I even have a compost bin in my office that I bring home when it gets full!
I do have a rather large compost pile so a small amount of mold cheese, the part you cut off of hard cheese is not a large thing in in a 6 foot square compost pile.
Most of the junk mail I get is sales flyers from grocery stores. There are very few envelopes that have window in junk mail.
I do my best to make sure all the legos are picked up before I vacuum.
If I do find something that did not decompose in the compost pile I access the reason why. Is it plastic? Does it need to be broken into smaller pieces?
I did not know you could put moldy cheese in there. I'd always heard to keep meat and dairy out. Well, and people say fish too, but we put our fish bones and skin in there and have no problems. This is great. I'm putting a power point presentation together to do a composting presentation. I wasn't using all of these. Thanks for giving me more ideas!
I only put small amounts of cheese in mine. I always put our leftover fish and shells in ours too. I have a quite large compost pile though and can really bury things, I am sure that the dogs sniff it out, but they keep away the vermin.
Hi Lisa, :)
This would be a great post to share on Wildcrafting Wednesday! I hope you'll stop by. :)
Thanks!
~ Kathy
Love your list. I didn't see anything on there that I didn't already put in our compost. I'm new to your blog and love that you are both Catholic and green - so am I!!!
Thank you for the ideas. Many of the things you mention like junk mail, we burn. I never thought to compost it. Thanks.
Debbie you can always add the ashes to your compost pile they would work fine in the pile.
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