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Monday, March 5, 2012

36 Things you can Compost

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Pumpkin Composting

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.

  1. eggshells
  2. leftover coffee
  3. coffee grounds
  4. vegetable peelings
  5. fruit cores, and seeds
  6. fruit peels
  7. leftovers – meatless ones
  8. paper towels (if you are using them you can reuse them)
  9. Leftover water from your water bottle
  10. junk mail (be sure to opt out of this)
  11. the newspaper, tear it into strips first
  12. the contents of your vacuum cleaner
  13. ashes from your fireplace – make sure they have cooled and there are no live embers in them
  14. cardboard boxes – tear this up too
  15. mistakes from baking –this hardly ever happens anymore at my house
  16. Plate scrapings – scrape the kids plates off into the compost bucket
  17. lint from the dryer
  18. Pet hair – you know the stuff they shed all over the floor you just vacuumed
  19. Tea bags and loose tea
  20. Dead houseplants
  21. Kleenex
  22. Moldy Cheese
  23. Fruit pits, olives, peach, apricot, etc.
  24. Mystery items in fridge (as long as meatless)
  25. toilet paper tubes
  26. Natural fiber(cotton) rags that have outlived themselves
  27. Cardboard egg cartons
  28. pencil shavings
  29. used matches
  30. Leaves raked up in the yard
  31. Manure from horses, and other grazing animals like goats and sheep (but not from dogs and cats)
  32. Hay and bedding material from gerbils, rabbits, and guinea pigs, as well as barn animals
  33. Grass clippings
  34. Weeds – make sure they have not gone to seed
  35. Trimmings  from your plants in the garden
  36. Dead plants from the vegetable garden at the end of the season
Do you compost? What is your favorite thing to compost?




This post is linked up to frugal Days Sustainable WaysYour Green ResouceLiving Well Blog HopWildcrafted Wednesday
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8 comments:

Becca said...

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!

Lisa - the Granola Catholic said...

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?

Anonymous said...

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!

Lisa - the Granola Catholic said...

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.

Mind Body and Sole said...

Hi Lisa, :)

This would be a great post to share on Wildcrafting Wednesday! I hope you'll stop by. :)

Thanks!
~ Kathy

kim said...

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!!!

Debbie said...

Thank you for the ideas. Many of the things you mention like junk mail, we burn. I never thought to compost it. Thanks.

Lisa - the Granola Catholic said...

Debbie you can always add the ashes to your compost pile they would work fine in the pile.

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