The C:N ratio of paper is much greatly higher than that of tree leaves because there is not much Nitrogen, just lots of carbon, in paper. The C:N ratio of tree leaves varies between 40:1 and 80:1, depending on age, because the leaves will have most of the nutrients they had, including Nitrogen, when they stopped making chlorofil and we started to see the true color of the leaves. So is paper a good substitute for leaves? No, because there are no nutrients in the paper, but paper can be a carbon in the compost, provided it is a small part of the total mix.

High Nitrogen source could be animal manures or coffee grounds as has already been suggested, which are usually free. Or you can spend money to buy something like alfalfa meal or pellets, or blood meal (yuck). If you want to go chemical you can buy 21-0-0 or other high nitrogen fertilizers. Many of your table scraps may be considered nitrogen when used in a compost pile. Just my own personal preference, I just don't think that you can beat shedded oak leaves for mulch, so if it were me, I would make more compost out of the paper, amend the soil with the compost and put shredded leaf mulch on top of that as needed. I have used compost for mulch and it is good, the plants do benefit from it, but it is not as good as leaves in my opinion at supressing unwanted weeds and grasses and keeping the moisture content and temperature of the soil constant. Just my .02. Bill P.

Lloyd, Well for quite some years, I was known for making HotOlives . I would make them simply by adding habanera peppers in solution to already processed queen or king green olive. I would them cure for about 30 to 45 days. It seemed that anyone that was willing to try these insanely hot olives would tend to ask for them again. So I became prone, not known to having people try them especially new people that would come over. My teenagers at the time would almost always make there friends eat at least one. Everyone of course would just watch the reaction because these things would make your eyes water. I would eventually give them some milk. Some of my teenage daughterÂs friends were over one night and I asked what would be a good user name for an online dating site. One of them said HotOlive, I said yes what a name for a dating site. So the name stuck. Take care David (hotolive)

Newspaper or cardboard offers quite a lot of C for the weight: http://compost.css.cornell.edu/chemistry.html If these things are easy for you to get, and dry leaves are hard for you to get, then I would not let lack of minerals etc. in the material be a reason not to use cardboard and newspaper. If you are composting on an urban scale, and using the compost on an urban scale (i.e. small garden or containers) it is not difficult or expensive to make up for a hypothetical lack of minerals in other ways. Of course, everyone on this board would hasten to remind you that unless a soil test shows an actual deficiency, going to extra lengths to supply minerals is needless effort and expense. These days, I find corrugated cardboard in much more plentiful supply than newspaper. I haven't subscribed to a newspaper since 1998 or so, because Internet, and even advertising circulars and free city papers aren't what they once were, but OTOH Amazon deliveries and the like sure generate a lot of cardboard. I also have most of my groceries delivered and those come in cardboard boxes. Corrugated cardboard doesn't mat down or form soggy clumps in quite the same way that newspaper can, but it helps a lot to shred it or tear it up as finely as you can. A household paper shredder that is rated for a high number of sheets can often shred cardboard for you, if it's not too thick and if you are careful to cut or tear it up into pieces first. For vermicomposting, or cold composting, or the cold final phase of hot composting, you will also find that worms really go for corrugated cardboard, because it is generally made with a cornstarch glue to attach the layers together and worms love the carbohydrate. I live in an urban area too, garden on a tiny scale, don't own a car, and don't have physical capacity to do hauling or heavy lifting on my own. So I can relate. But even folks in the leafy suburbs generally only have autumn leaves available once a year. :-) As another poster suggested, you can make an expedition to the suburbs and gather all the leaf bags off the curb that you'd like - IF you have enough storage space to keep them on hand to supply yourself throughout the year. And if you have a car. (I use Zipcar on an as-needed basis, which is convenient yet spares me much of the expense and all of the hassle of urban car ownership.) If you have absolutely no shame (I don't) there are also street trees, which drop lots of leaves on the sidewalks in the autumn. If you have a small rake, a granny cart, and a bag you're in business. You can also check to see what your city or municipality offers for free to residents. Public works departments/streets departments often have free shredded leaves for pick-up (on a seasonal basis) in addition to wood chips.