blutarski-
I never have enough materials on hand to get a proper mix going for a hot pile, but the one time I did get steam was when I found an expired 6lb bag of whey protein in the back of the cupboard. 6lb whey+3'x3'x3' pile of leaves=hothothot

sylviatexas..........not to be dropping a bomb on your fine efforts. Do not however add more sunflower seed hulls to your soil, mulch or compost piles. They contain an element that stunts or kills new plantlife.

Someone told me this years ago. At that time I posted a grief about plants in trouble under my bird feeder. Send that small amount of material to the landfill.

I'm amazed at what some of you put in your compost pile. Clothing? Cardbard? Shredded paper? Aren't you concerned about chemicals and dyes from those products leaching into your compost and turning it into toxic waste?

I've only been putting grass, leaves, the spent grains from brewing beer, vegetable trimmings and/or spoiled or unpalatable foods, crushed egg shells, coffee and tea grounds and filters. Also leafy matter and small twigs from when I clean out my vegetable garden in the fall. I don't put roots or thick stems since I have no way to chop them up effectively.

I thought you weren't supposed to put meat (i.e., 186 lb intruders, birds) or oils (e.g., salad dressings) in your compost pile because it would attract scavengers.

I only have a small area for composting, a chicken-wire enclosed pile 3 or 3.5 feet square. I didn't make nearly enough compost last year for my vegetable garden, although I used what I had and then added commercial compost.

Maybe I've been too conservative about what goes in? Still, I doubt I would put dead animals in my compost, like those four or five rats I killed last year.

Yrdling: what you put in your compost is entirely up to you. You are correct that meat/fats/oils may attract scavengers. However, I put these things (deep) in my piles because I live out in the country and already have scavengers. I also don't have neighbors or kids. By keeping such ingredients buried in the middle and fully enclosing the pile as best I can I really don't have much of a problem with small scavengers; beats the heck out of coyotes and feral cats tearing through my trash on Trash Day! But, like I say, it's a personal preference thing. Some people use shredded junk mail as their browns. I have a plentitude of natural browns laying around the property so I mostly use those. If I am desperate I sometimes use cardboard. I also have the space to have separate piles: one set of piles I am very stringent on what ingredients are used because that compost is going to be used on food plants; the other set of piles I'm less picky (napkins, fast food bags, old T-shirts, etc.) because it will only be used for landscaping. It's all up to you, the space you have available, the ingredients you have available, and your personal "comfort zone". Besides, I figure if the microbes do their job the end product will be pretty neutral compared to the original ingredients.

But, on to more important items!

Today, my piles got old T-shirts and underoos
assorted table and kitchen scraps from assorted tables & kitchens
coffee grounds & filters
remains of 3 owl pellets
paper towels full of puppy puke
handful of cute lil wildflowers I brought home from my walk to identify (turned out to be Fritillaria pudica: yellow bells)
many used snot rags from the allergy attack on the first day of Spring (ugh)
chicken and pigeon excrement
one dead mouse that went to a water bucket and ended up frozen there
all topped off with 4 inches (and counting) of fresh snow!

10 more Lobster carcuses. yay. I love putting seafood parts in my compost pile. Easter dinner is going to be lobster pie...and today we had lobster salad sandwiches !! YUM EEEE !!!!. I don't eat beef, pork, chicken or turkey,,,so Lobster is the ticket. I also found a fish market that will give me leftover fish parts for my compost. He told me to just bring my own plastic bin,,and he will fill it up. YAY !!!

One poor spring chick that did not make it. only 3-1/2 weeks in this cruel world.
I wanted it 8 weeks old so I could throw it in the pot. I love spring chicken, don't you?

Curt~

NOTHING!!!!!!!
I've been on vacation all week, and though the lovely place had an herb garden, they apparently don't compost (they are absent owners)
We never fixed our garbage disposal when it broke, so we compost/recycle almost everything. With a trashmasher, we only have to go to the dump 3-4 times a year!

flowersnhens, oh I can't read that to my dogs,cats, they would be upset you are composting yummy fish parts.
Then curt is composting a yummy chick, my raw fed animals are not happy with you all......
yrdling, nope not worried about my shorts causing issues. I figure if it was against my skin it can't be bad. I break out with everything so these have been washed and are a couple years old so I am sure there isn't anything bad in them. Heck my composter has a possum in it right now.
Ok we are now in the country and the worm bin got potato peels, onion skins, a few egg shells, I am sure a few paper towels and other stuff.

Sandy

I'm about to go out and put a tree-rat (squirrel) in my compost. We are over-run with them and they are tearing up my yard with their digging. This guy is #5 to be dispatched this spring. 3 previous ones went into compost and one into the trash.

I added dryer lint, coffee grounds, orange peels, pulverized egg shells, mushroom trimmings, some celery that got too soft, onion skins, yellow squash stems, and the suckers I pinched off my tomato plants. I also turned my pile.

All pretty conventional stuff so far, but I'm glad I found this thread as it gives me some new ideas. Since this compost is destined for use exclusively on my vegetables, I will remain conservative.

Thank you all for the responses.

Half a bucket of UCG's, several crushed up egg shells, a couple of banana peels, my peelings from Easter dinner's sweet potatoes and white potatoes, and a pear core. :)

30 crushed eggshells, 2 cardboard egg cartons, 3 botched gourd shells, and a partial bag of catfish blood bait dough.

New to the board. I have a student who cleaned out his chickenhouse and brought me about 600 pounds of wet chicken manure and grain.

hibiscus flowers. anaerobic fertlizer , leaves , dried grass garden soil , finised manure mixed with dirt. 1 cup of milk, and more leaves and dried up leaves. oh and fallen dried flowers.

Red and yellow pepper slices lost in the fridge, carrot cake, Clementine peels, banana skins, apple cores, mango pit and peel, carrot and beet peels, Chinese and purple cabbage cores, limp celery, tp roles, tissue, dryer lint, tea bags, UCG, whole grain pasta leftoversÂand five large recycling bags of pachysandra trimmings from my neighbor.

The pile was mostly browns (leaves), so the pachysandra was a move of desperation. ItÂs "Green Sheen"  extra shiny and in very long pieces, but I barely had time to turn the pile, layer in the pachysandra and wet it down between work and dark  so there was no time to chop. Something tells me that stuffÂs going to be recognizable for a long time. But it was free, convenient, and it's fun to experiment.

I added nothing today. The pile just sat there rotting away :-)

A few bags of lawn clippings went into the tumbler today.
I will also add my kitchen bucket later, peanut shells, coffee grounds, and the cage paper from my pet birds cages.
Sandy

One big tumbler already half full of leaves got a bunch of greasy pizza boxes, 20-30 gallons of UCGs from the bowling lanes, about 10 gallons of UCGs/banana peels/tea leaves from work and a nice drink of water. Tumbled for 30 minutes whilst I played in the windrows with the tractor.

Yes! it is spring on the prairies and I can play in some of the compost stuff. Yippppeeee!! One windrow was too wet on the ground around it for the tractor to work but it's drying out slowly.

Lloyd

Standard fare, UCG, tea, old juice, couple hairballs, matts trimmed from the same cats who contributed the hairballs, claw and nail clippings, veg and fruit scraps, old cooked rice, a couple trashy novels, a shirt that Husband won't wear anymore, wool scraps from spinning, a very old bottle of ginger ale, pee-soaked pine litter (actually horse bedding), leaves and some yard trimmings.

UCG's, holey socks, dryer lint, baby chick bedding complete with poo and spilled feed, veggie scraps, junk mail, shredded newspaper, leaves, eggshells, houseplant trimmings, a few feathers left behind by a sparrow hawk, the old bird nests from last years bluebird boxes, some algae from this weekends camping/fishing trip

I put in a Rush Limebaugh Book, what a mistake my pile has morphed into a Jabba The hut looking creature with a big mouth . Everytime I put in Manure from the Bulls stable it Spreads it all over the place. Help! Help!

At least you didn't feed it a book by Obama, it would be giving itself away to all the non-composters! I got a good laugh out of your post this morning, thank you!!

My pile is evolving it has learned to speak. It has a nice speaking voice kinda charistmatic. It does not appear to be educated I threw is some enclycopedias and it chewed them up and spit them out. I am afraid my neighbors may be affected by all the bull manure that is being slung far and wide. I also noticed it will not take Browns anymore just greens. I will keep you guys updated it is becoming quite scary!!!

2 gallon kitchen bucket with a lot of potato peels from my seed taters. I cut off the eyes for seed and eat the rest of the tater, so two and a half weeks worth. Seed
catalogs I order on line, but they still send the logs. I wonder why the price of seeds goes up even with more sales? Duh! Maybe Rush could explain it to me. And of course junk mail my favorite billing statements. After the bills are paid that is.

Curt~ P.S. Lloyd no blind tater jokes!

Snow flurries... :/

A whole big 2 gallon pot of burned pinto beans.

And I got the last of the tilling I needed to do in the garden.

These two are related.

Got the tumbler started again today, hubby mowed the lawn and the mixed leaves and grass clippings was enough to completely fill it up, whooohoooooo!! Oh, and UCG's, veggie peels, some stale old bread, *my apologies annpat*

Some orange peels and apple cores. UCG filters from three pots coffee and a gallon bag of tomatoes that were too long in the freezer.

Curt

corn taco shells
lettuce
a bit of taco meat left over from supper
the cardboard from a box of peeps marshmallow ducks with a bit of sugar

Not much today, but had to post it anyway, Morel Mushroom "root ball" and soak water. I'm dreaming of a surprise morel patch coming from my compost!

coffee grounds & filters
tea bags
leftovers from office luncheon

got a whole load of tree trimmings this week,
but they're still piled up in the driveway.

Kitchen scraps, lots of coffee grounds and filters, bones from whole fried catfish, old oranges, lobster tail shells?, shrimp tails, old bread, shredded weeds, and one road killed squirrel.

I fred my automatic compost bin some stale breads, coffee ground, egg shell, blue cheeses, chicken skin, shrimp tails, left over pasta, and banana peel today.

4 cardboard cup holders, 3 paper eggshell cartons, 2 paper towel tubes. 2 corn cobs, 5 banana peels, gristle and fat from a pork roast, a dozen eggshells. (and all my kitchen scraps ground up in my new compost grinder) ( a hand cranked meat grinder bolted to a stump next to the pile)

The flap from my netflix movie, (paper), coffee grounds and filter. A bit of old coffee, about half a gallon of milk that was on the sell by date, a baby rabbit that got into the shed and died, a bit of cooked chicken and skin, a few paper towels, the little paper bag that the chicken neck/organs came in inside the chicken.

Coffee grounds/filters, jicama peel, banana peels, pine needles, water from steaming spinach, and a pear I found in the bottom of the fridge (I don't even remember buying pears). Forgot to cover with browns so the birds got the pear and the dog got the jicama peel.

UCG, corn husks, old moldy hay and chicken manure and grain leavings. Turned my school pile today and DA*M, it was hot all the way down, but a little(lot) wet in the bottom - need to add a pallet on the ground and get some airflow -the pile is on concrete.

lots of UCG
trims from vegetable soup
grape stems and orange peel
one more spring chicken???
Some rain and the weather finally warmed up so the pile took off, always a problem in the cold country. So much to compost so little time!

Curt~

The motherload of UCGs.(May trade grounds for tomato seedlings this year to sweeten future deals.)
Compressed coconut bedding
Old potatoes
Orange slices
Old onion
Napkins
Paper bag
Pepper cores

Momstar, does your dog eat compost too? haha. I have to keep mine away. She'll eat unrecognizable stuff if I'll let her. ick.

Kim

Some math papers that I never graded and are now too late to return, neighbor's grass clippings, an old squash from the basement, leaves from the leaf pile. It was raining and everything was wet and starting to stink. Guess I'll brown it up tomorrow. I love having something to look forward to!

Bene

Hey, I searched on 'dryer lint' and this thread came up. Question, I collect my dryer lint in a bag in my laundry room and it's now full. Can I put that in my pile? Is it a green or brown? And I'm assuming dryer sheets cannot go in?

Lots of good tips here, the old protein powder, lobster carcasses an other things. I have 3 piles which are now mostly wood chips from last years trimmings and weeds and soon will have deadheaded roses from my garden. Luckily we finally got some needed rain an I am going to stir up the piles this afternoon.

Vegetable and fruit trimmings. Pasta, cheerios and some old rice. Hay mixed with chicken manure. Some shredded paper. I think I need more greens for my pile.

Shredded paper, coffee grounds, and fruit scraps from work. Two 5-gallon buckets of leftovers, veggie and fruit trimmings, old tea, coffee grounds/filters, spoiled tea from work, and lots of shredded oak/hickory leaves.
And sadly, a few small ground squirrles and a lizard tail that the cat caught and didn't finish.

buford, it seems like people put lint in their compost piles pretty often.

It's probably nearly all cotton, since it seems to me that synthetics, not actually having any "fibers", don't shed.

Today I gave the composter some coffee grinds, tea bags, leaves cut off from a lenten rose plant, oak leaves, strawberry tops, potato peels, corn husks, some macaroni leavings along with a couple other little bits of vegie leavings from red peppers and onions.
Going to ask the coffee shop by work if they would give me their coffee grinds every day. Hope they will! We shall see tomorrow!

Thats a great idea, I'm gonna try to get some coffee grounds from a local shop too. Hope I succeed, I can use some greens.

Yay!

I have a source for coffee grinds now. The store gave it to me in bags with a label on how to use it in the garden. How can you beat that?

So I added coffee grinds along with filters today, about 6 pounds worth. So cool.

A couple of rusty steel wool pads

UCG, torn up junk mail, LOTS of fruit and veg scraps, a couple of aged dry soup mixes (vegan), the honey that nobody likes, cat puke, stale saltines, snot blots, spent flower blooms, a few dead things that the ferals hunted for me.

'A couple of rusty steel wool pads"

I love this fascinating idea!

I once asked a homeowner how he had managed to grow big beautiful acid-loving pine trees in our alkaline soil from he!! with our alkaline water from he!!, & he told me he had added iron filings to the planting hole & occasionally added a few more.

Snowflakes!