I would say that amoung others,
MICRONUTRIENT
: trace element
: an organic compound (as a vitamin) essential in minute amounts to the growth and health of an animal or plant.
and
improves soil's ability to retain moisture
and
improves soil airation
and
gives the big three NPK a place to hang their hat until they are needed
and
it gives us greenies a thrill knowing it was recycled

Sounds to me like you are doing good things for your soil so just keep on keeping on.

Browns/greens are mainly for the "cooking" process and keeping your pile hot...speeding up composting time.

Your source materials determine your nutrient/tannins/phenol/etc content...regardless of brown or green.

If you're getting along just fine in your environment/method for properly breaking it down in the time span you desire, you're all good.

Browns are good for Carbon, which is used for mechanical purposes like building twigs, stems, roots. Carbon is not flighty like Nitrogen, it tends to stick around. What you're doing sounds fine.

Those tree leaves have a lot of valuable nutrients, while the paper has none. Any greens you might add also have nutrients and these are there in the compost when it is finished.
Greens and Browns are not there just for the "cooking"process, although the bacteria that digest the material in the compost pile use them as a food source, the Greens providing the Nitrogen these bacteria use as energy so they can digest the Browns.
The only way to know what nutrients are in your soil is with a good, reliable soil test for soil pH and the major nutrients. Just using the compost I made (mostly tree leaves but kitchen waste and horse manure also) my soil went from a pH of 5.7 to 7.2 and the P, K, Ca, and Mg levels went from low optimal to high optimal.

Here is a link that might be useful: nutrients of tree leaves

Sounds to me like you're doing just fine.

It is completely incorrect to state that paper products have no valuable nutrients (other than C). While they are primarily celluloses and lignin, paper and cardboard both do contain valuable plant nutrients such as calcium, potassium, phosphorus, etc. The amounts, while small, depend upon the specifics of the paper, paperboard or cardboard. Furthermore, office and fine art papers typically have significant amounts of inorganic additives such as calcium carbonate, kaolin (a clay), talc, etc., and the white papers often have added titanium dioxide. Both the inorganic additives and the natural elements that came with the wood pulp other than C, N and S are found in the ash after burning - the higher the ash residue, the more of those elements are presents in the paper product.

For most, the primary benefit of compost are the humins or humates that are the backbone of good compost, and the plant nutrients are an added benefit. Formation of humins and humates depends heavily on lignin, and paper products are a great source for that. The greens that you add provide a great source of the desirable plant nutrients in addition to being the major N source that microbes use to grow and reproduce. The real key is getting the right C:N balance, and if you do that from natural plant sources, be they leaves or paper for C, then you will most likely be getting a very decent mix of desirable plant nutrients in your compost mix. If you're using paper/cardboard, with a very high C:N ratio (150-500) vs. autumn leaves with a lower ratio (30-80), then the right blend will take more greens. In the end, if you get the C:N mix right, the rest will pretty much take care of itself.

This post was edited by TXEB on Mon, Jun 10, 13 at 17:03

TX, I read questions and formulate a response, and I get down to the bottom of the thread and find out you've already posted pretty much what I was going to say. I'm not complaining. :-]

tox, great minds just think alike, and there are darned few of us left. ;-)

"Greens and Browns are not there just for the "cooking" process, although the bacteria that digest the material in the compost pile use them as a food source, the Greens providing the Nitrogen these bacteria use as energy so they can digest the Browns."

...that's what "cooking a pile" is. The heat part of the "cooking" comes from that microorganism breakdown...which speeds up the process.

You can compost a 100% brown pile, but it generally takes a lot longer (such as a leaf mold).

One more point to clarify - it's the high C materials (e.g., "browns") that actually supply the major food and energy source for the microbes that are digesting the "pile". Carbon (C) is the prime energy source, not N. Overall, the microbial colony of a good compost pile uses about 30 parts of C, predominately as a food energy source, for each part of N. The N consumed is used primarily for protein synthesis, not energy.

If the C:N ratio of the pile is appreciably greater than 30:1, then then very little of the available N will be lost; it will be initially trapped in the microbial biomass. If, however, the C:N ratio is much lower than 30:1 (high N pile), a good portion of the excess can be lost as ammonia.

The lignin is what holds the cellulose fibers in the plant together and is removed when the wood is "cooked" to make paper. The only thing left in bleached paper is the cellulose although kraft paper, cardboard, butcher wrap, etc. may have some. I can find a lot of papers on soil nutrients but none on nutrients in paper.

kimm - typical newsprint is ~ 20-21% lignin, corrugated cardboard is ~ 13-15% lignin, white office paper is ~0.4-0.5% lignin. The amount of lignin in paper products is highly variable, and depends on the type and grade of paper.

Depending on additives used (CaCO3, kaolin, etc.,) various papers can have ash values well over 20%. Wood pulp used in papermaking is ~ 0.5% ash - that's the natural mineral content without any additives. The ash represents the inorganic mineral content of the paper product, much of which fits with plant nutrients.

The key point is when using high C:N materials for the C source (like paper products), a higher proportion of greens will be used to construct a pile with the right C:N ratio for composting. Those additional greens will bring with them additional desired plant nutrients. In the end if the mix is right, then you'll end up with about the same level of desirable plant nutrients in the pile.

This post was edited by TXEB on Tue, Jun 11, 13 at 9:03

I honestly fail to believe plain white paper has nutritional value.

The value of "browns" is that they decompose slowly. It's not a color, it's lignins and cellulose.

FYI, the royal stables at Buckingham Palace use shredded documents as bedding for the horses, then compost it. It reportedly makes wonderful compost for the palace gardens.

Lignin and cellulose are basically just carbohydrates. Although they have different molecular structures, they are made up of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen, and can all be represented approximately by the generic formula CH2O. Aside from trace minerals, there isn't much difference between wood and paper, elementally speaking.

I was surprised to find how much inorganic additives can be found in paper - clay and calcium carbonate can make up quite a bit of the mass of some papers.

tox - Pretty close - both lignin and celluloses are essentially C, H and O, but the ratios differ. Although lignin and cellulose are elementally very similar, they are metabolized by various microbes quite differently, and their digestion has differing end products. Residual lignin (meaning undigested) is one of the keys to the formation of humins/humates. There's always some, the question is how much. In advanced treatment of composting the C:N ratio of the feedstock is adjusted for the bioavailable carbon content using about 20% of the initial lignin content in the calculation.

This post was edited by TXEB on Tue, Jun 11, 13 at 16:37

"the only browns I ever have are leaves in the fall. My lot is only 33x90 feet including the house and a garage, so hoarding leaves all year is a bit out of the question."

Instead of saving up leaves to compost with, just shred them and put them in your beds to serve as mulch and allow them to break down in place. (sheet composting)

Some people shred them by making a pile and running over them with the lawnmower a couple of times. Other people put them in a large trash can and use a string trimmer to grind them up. We can all be jealous of the lucky folks who have a big dedicated chipper shredder.

Anyway, take the shredded leaves and mulch your beds with them. If you like, you can mix the leaves into the top couple of inches of soil for a faster break down. (I have oaks and magnolias whose leaves break down incredibly slowly, so this helps in my case)

Since you have heavy clay like me, you'll find that the earth worms just swarm in your beds to gobble up the shredded leaves, dragging that organic material deeper and really loosening up the soil and helping improve drainage.

Adding used coffee grounds along with the leaves kicks that into turbo mode as earth worms absolutely love uncomposted coffee grounds. I divided some Japanese painted ferns this spring in an area where I always pile on the coffee grounds and the soil there was absolutely thick with worms.

The more experience I have with sheet composting the more I think it's the way to go, especially for those of us trying to make a difference in heavy clay.