Yucky old mushrooms, orange peels, dryer lint, and a thick cardboard cup holder that I rescued from a restaurant. Yay!

Which brings me to a question: I know I can compost plain cardboard and black and white newsprint... but can I compost colored items colored paper or cereal boxes and glossy boxes? I've got so much of this, but I wonder about ink and toxins. Any suggestions?

Kim

well,with 12 inches snow last week and snow this evening not much, I did take a bowful of banana peelings, potato peelings and just scattered them over the snow in my flower beds.

..
Hair, nail clippings and, snot rags. Then I peed in it. Covered with leaves and spent bird seed.
..

coffe grounds
banana peels
pomagranit peels and seeds
eggshells and the carton they were in
asapragus bottoms
white papertowels
pepperstems
lots of leaves
dead plants
water from cleaning the koi pond filter.
I started my compost in early spring and today I used my first screened batch not very much though I need to produce more trash lol.

Rott- Very funny! Sounds kind of gross, but I'm sure your pile will be happy as ever.

Kim

Egg shells, shrimp shells, coffee grounds.

Kim, you can put "colored ink" in the search box at the bottom of the main forum page & it'll bring up previous discussions, but I think the consensus is that the danger of colored ink in the past was heavy metal;
today's inks are made with soy-cheaper & better for the micro-herd, too!

We've been getting lots of fruit from our lemon tree, so I'm happily busting the myth that citrus peels won't decompose.

Other than our usual kitchen trimmings (we cook from scratch all the time), the notable addition was the dregs of the spiced wine from out holiday open house. My steaming compost pile smells like a Chinese herb shop, which must be from the spices in the wine!

..

Kim,

I try to extend the variety of ingredients as far as possible. At the same time, I like to deposit a little of myself. It seems to me that snot rags can be digested just as well in an aerobic compost pile as well as a land fill or some sewage treatment plant if I chose to flush stuff in the toilet. Frankly I think an aerobic pile will disrupt the pathogen spread compared to other options.

Inks: I don't trust anything that might be printed overseas. Sunday paper yes. Color inserts no. I compost the funnies because I love the funnies and they should remain with us.

And then there is the office: Office paper doesn't have the same lignin content compared to newsprint. Office paper breaks down quicker because it has less lignin than newsprint. However, office paper is primarily from photocopiers and laser printers. Photocopiers and laser printers use toner rather than ink. My reply form Xerox was more or less: "the paper will break down but the toner will not." I've gone through about a hundred MSDS sheets for black and white toner and they are all non toxic. I compost office paper and accept the plastic content of toner. I cannot speak to color photocopies and color laser prints. Personally, I avoid the color stuff.

to sense

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Sweet tea that soured
coffee grounds (don't use filters anymore, bought myself a reusable filter)
a few gallons of leftover coffee
tea leaves
rotted apples
christmas leftovers
veggie trimmings
dried leaves
and a few alive worms I found when digging a hole to plant an azalea bush

Apple cores, banana peels, coffee grounds, nut shells, egg shells, potato peelings, carrot peelings, celery bottoms. We have almost 2 feet of snow so I had to dig a path to the pile but it was worth it.

"I like to deposit a little of myself" "I compost the funnies because I love the funnies and they should remain with us"

ROFL. How true. It's like our legacy lives on in our compost. Kids seem like way too much trouble IMO, so compost it is!

Kim

Mine is frozen - solid. Will probably be mid February before it thaws out enough to feed or turn.

I've been adding the usual kitchen scraps. This is my first winter doing pile composting and I'm really surprised that it hasn't frozen solid yet. I guess I've added enough greens to be generating a bit of heat.

Added two containers of kitchen scraps, and ours is frozen. I had to chip through the frozen top layer for a spot to deposit the goods. Hope the good guys are warm down there.
Carol

Coffee filters up the wazoo!
peels and cores of every variety.
egg shells, egg shells, egg shells.

I was going to make a post on my blog about my addiction to composting, but my wife says its a little too decomposition for composition.

Here is a link that might be useful: the mountains of mist blog

Usual kitchen goodies (coffee grounds and filter, tea leaves and bags, egg shells, broccoli, potato, carrot, onion, garlic, romaine, orange peels & trimmings (I might have left out something here as I don't write down menus) PLUS today our big furry cat deposited a lovely large furball right near me so I had to put that plus the tissues I picked it up with in the compost. If DH gets to them first he puts them in the garbage! Score for the compost! Yes, I'm crazy and amused by small things! LOL

Patrick -- check your link. I think you mean blogspot dot com, not org

The outer 3-4 inches of my pile is frozen, but the top is workable (I finally just flipped another orchard bin upside-down on it as a topper LOL), and the middle was moist and steaming like CRAZY when I turned it today!!!! Woulda brought tears to my eyes if I wasn't afraid they'd freeze to my face. Was 27F out at the time and the wind was starting to howl bringing in the freezing rain the weather guy keeps warning us about.

Hurriedly added 10 gals various peoples' kitchen scraps and plate scrapings from the pizzeria, ~4 inches chopped leaves, 1/2 wheelbarrow full of UCG, 1/2 Quart of icky ice cream, snot rags a plenty, another layer of chopped leaves for insulation and put The Topper back on so I wouldn't wake up to an inch think ice chrysalis.

I'm just giddy about all that steam!

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Chipped up a christmas tree with a bunch of other stuff including some newsprint.

Made my first bin with no grass clippings.

I threw in some pumpkins finally.

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My compost is getting a gift it may ignore. Last night I had a small bowl of shelled pecans and almonds as a snack but didn't finish them so just put a paper napkin over the bowl rather than putting them away. Of course the cats found them and thought I had left them a toy! So nuts all over and I'm not eating the ones they played with. I'll probably still be seeing nuts in my garden 10 years from now unless the birds find them as they likely don't break down quickly.

I think it would make an interesting video to see what these nocturnal pets of mine do when I'm sound asleep! They think everything is a toy.

You might not be seeing nuts in the garden 10 years from now;
you're likelier to see nut *trees*!

I think your idea of a nanny cam for pets is intriguing;
maybe you could win some money on America's Funniest Videos & spend it all in the garden!

Screenings from my previous pile. I now have a compost ring half-full of screened compost ready for next weekend. I love the smell of finished compost, it smells like... victory.

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Spread some compost today and

I transferred the ceremonial peach pit from the old pile to the new pile.

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Coffee grounds and leftover coffee, I added this to a wheelbarrow of water from our recent snow and poured the whole lot of the garden where the tomatoes will be in spring.
Apple cores
Banana Peels
Tissues
Grapefruit peels
Leaves
soft potatoes

Ho Ho Hope and dreams of Spring Baby!! Hope and dreams!

Curt :-)))

Orange peels, quartered limes, the crepe myrtle leaves I finally raked, some weeds, coffee grounds, more orange peels.

the rind of of bloody orange. Has anybody seen these things?? It looks like an orange, but the inside is such a deep red it looks black. Wierd!

"It looks like an orange, but the inside is such a deep red it looks black"

people eat them things?

Today was a low-cal day for the compost;

a few freeze-burned stems of various things
lumpy milk
coffee grounds etc
shredded junk mail

cooked Catfish bones, tea bags, baked potato skins and leavings, overcooked pinto beans, left over hard candy, paper napkins and part of a bell pepper.

I started a new pile today (the fourth one) and layered:

old zinnia stems
grass clumps from digging a new rose bed
leaves
bags of used coffee grounds from Starbucks
horse poop
grapes that no one ate for some reason
clementine peels plus the one that rots overnight in the bag even though you checked them over at the store
pair of burned waffles
egg shells, potato peels
a few raisins that fell on the floor
toilet paper tubes and paper towels

used tea bags
used coffee grounds & filters
junk mail
paperwork from 1994, discovered when I was looking for something else
eggshells
banana peels
apple cores

Today I added most of the contents from my freezer :-( because the refrigerator quit working sometime on the weekend and everything was thawed.

rose clippings
paperback book that fell into the kitchen compost bucket, yuck.
used coffee grounds & filters
used teabags
banana peels
onion skins
scraps of potato & carrot

Fallen leaves from the stupid roses that my sister got from her boyfriend (not jealous at all);)

Potato peelings, an unused leek, lots of freezing rain...

Well........
For a second....
I considered throwing in the shavings from my wife's "PED EGG"

Hahaha. John, hilarious.

Speaking of which, is there anything you guys refuse to put in the compost? Something that you know would be good for it, but you just can't eat the veggies grown in it,knowing that a certain something went into the compost??

No ;-)

It makes a wonderful Nitrogen source ;-)

So you just shred your junk mail and put it in there too? I just knew there was something I could do with all the junk mail. I guess there's not any worries about the ink. Thanks for the tips about the colored ink Kim. I was thinking about that.

Hal

Here is a link that might be useful: Compost Tumbler

heirloom junkie: there's nothing that grosses me out in the compost except I won't put bread in there (in homage to annpat) or any type of poop. Other than that, I rip up all boxes (cereal, frozen lunches, any/all cardboard)rather than recycling them and junk mail and envelopes without the window plastic stuff. Even Diet Coke cartons...I AM an addict. I used them for lasagna beds last year and they did break down nicely under the other stuff I threw on top. So I figure eventually we eat mostly everything I buy that isn't metal or glass. RE: nuts (in the pile, that is) DH eats tons of peanuts in the shell. They of course go into the compost but break down very slowly. Last year one of the grandkids said, Grandma, your growing peanuts? Cool! Good lesson on composting for the little dumpling. Oh, don't compost dumplings, they're like bread :)

Barbie, I've been meaning to ask about annpat and bread... what's the story there?

Oh, and jonhughes...I was at a compost meeting w a bunch of people who were about to start compost piles for the first time. I raised my hand and asked the teacher about peeing in the compost. He was impressed I knew this. And the class about fell out of their chairs, horrified. I got immense pleasure from both. ;)

heirloomjunkie - I wonder how many people were turned off from composting after you asked that question..hehehe...and how many were secretly excited=)

Compost today:
grapes that went bad
UCG's
tea bags
banana peels
apple cores
leftovers from cleaning out fridge/freezer
onion peels
old sweet tea
shredded paper
shredded leaves
pored over leftover coffee and soda when everything was piled up and covered with leaves

I think annpat is just grossed out by the visual of collapsed, soggy, icky bread.

I came home today from a hard day at work to find a cardboard egg carton sitting on top of my compost bucket in the kitchen. Day salvaged!

heirloomjunkie: I remember annpat posting a whole thing about some worm/snake like thing called "planarium" with a link to a photo and everything. It was so disgusting I had nightmares (but I'm worm-phobic). It supposedly develops in soggy bread in compost bins. ICCCCCCCCCCCCKKKKKKKK! It truly gave me the creeps.

Today I fed my beauty lots of torn up paper and cardboard along with about 3 gallons of assorted kitchen scraps (ucg's, peels, veg scraps)