Best- leaves, horse manure, cow manure, coffee grounds, grass clippings

worst- motor oil, pet poop, meat, cheeses, etc.

My favorite compost ingredient is shredded junk mail. Not so much for benefits to the compost but more so because of the reduction in the amount of trash that we take to the curb. We have to pay per can for trash pick up. Composting my junk mail, has significantly reduced our trash volume.

Other favorites include kitchen scraps and leaves.

I don't think I have a least favorite? except maybe the year i put in un-shredded branches from the christmas tree. They took forever to decompose and were sharp and prickly, poking though my gloves on occasion.

Best: Diversity. inc. straw, shredded leaves, goat or horse or cow manure, coffee grounds, yard & grass clippings, garden clippings, ground-drop fruit, wood chips, cottonseed meal, chipped hay, alfalfa pellets.

Worst: any oils, domestic pet poop (cat or dog)

Dave

Best: leaves, straw, kitchen wastes, used coffee grounds; lobster shells, chicken manure & other presents from Annpat.

Worst: radioactive waste, known carcinogenics, heavy metals, biohazards, razor blades, hypodermic needles, beer (unused.)

I really like: mixed tree leaves, grass clippings, UCG

I've composted: pretty well all garden and flower bed plants, kitchen waste, some residual diesel fuel in the tumblers (I wouldn't add it), a rat, a Robin, a Blue Jay, a mouse

I dislike: rose bush stalks (ouch)

I've never tried: manures (yet)

I'd like to try: Horse manure/leaf/straw mix

Lloyd

Best: Leaves and the box of cabbage/lettuce leaves and potato/carrot peelings I get once a week from my local banquet hall.

Worst: large branches, car batteries and old bricks

I can definitely say that one unbroken egg is the WORST YUKKY awful thing to put in the compost. And plastic yogurt cups dont work out to well either(who knew?).

The best is any leftover food that I can scrape off my kids plate into the compost instead of feeling guilty aboutthrowing away "perfectly good food".

Umm, I compost pretty well everything... This year I'm going to open up some humanure compost that I put out 3 years ago at camp. Don't get squeemish its just going to go around trees. It'll be interesting to see how the trees with humanure compost do vs the trees with UCG. The UCG trees do WAY better than the trees without, like 3x better, its amazing.

I originally built my first compost pile with dry stacked bricks. Big mistake, had bricks all through the compost... Didn't get them all out for a year until I took the finished compost completely out. Then I was picking bricks out of the garden after I'd accidentally shoveled them into the wheel barrow and added them.... Oops...
So bricks would have to be my least favorite thing in the compost. Although branches are pretty poor. This spring I'm going to rent a chipper and we'll have chipping day to chip all the branches around the yard including stuff I saved from last year. The goal is to not buy any mulch this year.

Best: Table/refrigerator scraps; seaweed; organic grass clippings; shredded leaves; lobster shells; pumpkins; hay; straw; clam shells; any manure I can spare from the garden, which isn't much; fish parts!; wool sweaters; stuff from Patrick, of course (Oh! Wait! Patrick's never sent me compost! Where's the unhappy/angry face icon?).
(I put in lots of other stuff, but the above are my favorites. Well, except for the compost from Patrick, which, as I stated above, I've never received.)

Worst: Bread (Composting summer visitors to my home repeatedly overrule my steadfast rule against sog in the pile---with the predictable, nauseating results); wood ash (in my opinion, wood ash is better applied directly, not put in the compost pile); whole Thanksgiving turkey (would have been grand, except the dog figured the whole thing out, repeatedly retrieving it); urea (which my annoying neighbor, Phil, covered my pile with when I wasn't home); tons of washed-up Pogies (which would have been a great addition except that my dog walked round and round and round the compost bin, rubbing his body on the sides of the wire bin and getting himself covered with rotten fish guts; 100 lbs of Haddock parts from the fish market (which would have been great, except for the large, sharp bones that took a couple of years to cease being dangerous); a muskrat coat and a mink hat (which were disturbingly dead-animal-like, and the pelts became slimy once the fur was gone. Every time I came upon the fur-covered things, I'd forget what they were and jump out of my skin); dog fur (repels water and is gross and takes forever to go away) human hair ditto;

Things I wouldn't dream of composting: Bread (because I'm not a disgusting person) baguettes, donuts, and their ilk; motor oils; dead vermin; reptiles; charcoal briquette ash; any synthetic materials.

Dog poop and human urine along with fish parts are the best high nitrogen items.

Best greens, lawn clippings and leafy vegetable waste.

Worst greens, Musa Basjoo or Japanese Snow Banana leaves as they form a mat that stops air from penetrating well.

Best carbon, shredded or whole deciduous leaves as they break down nicely and hold down even the most bad smelling odors.

Worst carbon: Evergreen Southern Magnolia leaves as they take much longer to break down than even heavy card board.

Best - The neighbors grass clippings (mine stay on the lawn). Just like dumping gas on a fire... Close second - leaves. Leaves take longer, so they'll never finish first.

Favorite - Squirrels. I can compost these bushy-tailed rats in two weeks or less. Always seems to be an endless supply...

Worst - Raccoons. Simply too big to go into a 4x4x4 pile (at least, if you have neighbors with a sense of smell)

Don't Even Bother - pails of fat, large bones, anything toxic or industrial

Cheers,

Tim

Hey y'all, what do you do with that stuff IN the lobster tails? If you have too much ,send it to texas and I will get rid of it!!! About the closest thing to lobster we get is the Louisiana Lobster. To much work , for to little meat. when you suck the stuff out of the head, there is hardly anything left to compost.

I have added alot of "out of date" beer to my pile.

Worst- because of the material.
Hydrocarbons, petrol, gas, motor oil, and the like.
Herbicides and pesticides of course
Chlorine and chloramine
Any toxic chemicals or heavy metals
pressure treated wood
Plastic

Worst-because it makes it difficult to deal with.
Heavy string! (try forking or raking something with lots of string in it!!!!!!!! cut up the string from the tomatoes before throwing in the compost.)
Big Sticks and branches for the same reason.

Best!
Most anything else I suppose. I'm a humanure composter and generally have very hot compost so the normally "yucky or no-no" items are really not a problem for me. A compost pile that is 5' by 5' can manage a good hot mass without causing much smell issue. Urine is the key to hot compost and plenty of good cover materials are key to controlling smell.

Favorites
Number one is other people's bagged leaves. Just cause it is handy to stack up the bags in the middle bin for future use.

Urine, the key to hot compost
Whatever is biodegradable that would otherwise go in the trash (especially anything stinky! I hate a smelly trash can.)
Fish heads/fish guts since there is no other good way to dispose of them without stink.
Yard waste, spent garden plants.
paper products of all kinds (used paper towels, tissues, plates etc.)
The contents of the dust pan when I sweep the floor.
old/rotten fruit and veggies
Any food stuff that isn't going to get eaten
Used coffee ground/filters
used cooking grease (can make compost go turbo hot under the right conditions)
shredded junk mail/paper/cereal boxes etc.
manures including human and pet (only because it is hot hot compost)

Here is a link that might be useful: My Compost