Started the month with:

1. Paper Shreadings from work which I just learned were not being recycled. Pretty frustrating since I'd been brining documents from home to shread at work.

2. lawn trimmings

3. UCGs from home and SBUX

4. A dead mouse which my cat presented to me as welcome home gift.

Cantelope rinds, from a very good melon... sweet and juicy...

egg shells

corn husks...

Several tea bags
Coffee grounds
Left over Swiss chard*
Left over runner beans*
Vegetable trimmings from last night: onion and garlic skins, bean strings, potato peels
The string from round a pork joint*
Addresses from envelopes (the envelopes themselves go in the paper recycling)
Peach and plum stones
2 kiwi skins
Gone off yoghurt dregs
A few till receipts
Large branch cut off a tree peony

* denotes cooked items - anathema to some composters but never posed a problem in my experience

Mats off the cats
a hairball
human & feline nail trimmings
peach skin and stone
plum skin and stone
tomato guts
snotter blotters
cotton pads
banana peels
coffee grounds
freezer burnt peas
1 ear corn on the cob
chants and cusses

coffee grounds and paper filter plus bag of UCG from coffee shop
tea bag
cardboard from toilet tissue roll ripped into small pieces (what fun!!!) ;)
salad trimmings
salad I couldn't finish with dressing (I know some don't agree but it won't help the burn barrel either)
cat's fur - he really needed combing and I got a lot
whey from making yogurt cheese

All of the above covered with fine wood shavings.

Deadheaded flowers put in a garbage bag til they rot. Don't want any more seeds from these plants in my garden even tho the anaerobic process will be awful. Compost won't get hot enough with frost every night now.

We're burning wood slash from removal of coniferous trees so tomorrow I get to spread wood ashes over my entire new yard and a bit on the lasagna bed!!!

veg. scraps
napkins
paper towels made from recycled paper
kitchen crock contents
paper towel and tp rolls
box storage bags came in
hamburger buns we won't eat
crushed up tortilla chips

100 lbs of UCG's, lol

cardboard sandwich bag box
1/4 box of cereal

bunch of torn-up pasteboard snack cartons
(Office supply of junk food was just re-stocked!)

teabags & leftover tea

eggshells

apple core (apple corps? apple corpse?)

torn-up junk mail

some pretty good flower bed material that had "migrated" onto sidewalks & driveway

tons of luscious green 4 o'clock stems & leaves

banana peel
paper plates
tortilla chip crumbs

lilikoi rinds
shrimp shells
lemongrass trimming
used tea bags
leftover rice
a few old palm fronds
a few rotten limes

i need more browns!

Canada golden rod
Canada golden rod
Canada golden rod
Canada golden rod
Canada golden rod
Canada golden rod
Canada golden rod
Canada golden rod
Canada golden rod

egg shells
left over okra
various leaves
vegetable trimmings

I have a container compost that made from a large plastic storage bin. It's small as far as composts go, but works pretty well for my situation. There are some posts about it on my blog linked below.

Here is a link that might be useful: Container Gardening in the Desert

I put 2 boxes (well half boxes but you get the idea) of stale ceral in the other day, followed 'em up with 3 of the mini boxes that had cereals we'll never eat.
Of course as soon as I did it my wife came home with "I was gonna eat that!" yeah right, 2 year old cereal?

I'm going to do the same with tea today. If we haven't had it since we moved here it must not be very good. I should attack the candy dish too and my wife's amazing stash of stale fortune cookies. Why do we keep stale fortune cookeies?
I just unwrap them, the fortune stays in the cookie, it all composts!

Winter squash vines from a 30 x 70 foot garden patch. Thats, like, 15 wheelbarrow loads full, heaped up to dragging. We now have a big, big pile. It will diminish considerably in about 2 days as all that heats up.

minimal additions here...

SB coffee grounds
dryer lint
cardboard box sandwich bags came in

SCOBYs from two Kombucha brew crocks.

I won't punish y'all.

Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria And Yeast also known as a mushroom, but it's not a shroom.

You have to look up Kombucha by yourself.

Terran

Over the last two days I've added.
-watermelon rinds
-bag of carrots
-1/2 cucumber
-2 tea bags
-1/2 bag of left over chips
-apple juice
-old icing (not sure if this is allowed)
-

I fed it a lot of good stuff, but too good, as I have visitors! How do I get rid of/control them?

{{gwi:307106}}

SB coffee ground and one of their brown bags
egg shells
dryer lint
dog fur
vaccuum contents
a tortilla
few pieces of cranberry bread
contents of kitchen crock
recycled paper towels

Sunday I fed the pile:

cucumber skin
orange and red pepper tops and insides
onion skins and tops
eggshells
recycled paper towels
dryer lint
SB coffee grounds and the brown bag they came in
2 hot dog rolls
1 bagel
garden trimmings
shredded paper from home

yesterday:

ice cream sticks & wrappers
coffee grounds, tea bags
shredded junk mail
banana peel, apple core
fast food debris: napkins, paper wrappers, cartons

nothing but ....

5 gallon pail full of celery turned into a patch of soil

perhaps a mistake but my tumbler got like 20 pounds of chicken wings that had gotten furry in the walkin at my family's restaurant.

Also some fast food litter - a big mac box, stray fries and fry container and the paper bag.

About a dozen or so large heavy bags of grass clippings and leaves that I "stole" from sidewalks

I treated my mom's compost to a bag of UCG and two bags of shredded lettuce that had gotten soggy and a shredded newspaper, then gave it all a goo turning.

boxes & bags of sawdust-
found it on Freecycle!

Elbow grease :)

snork!

I think we *all* put some elbow grease into this stuff!

This past week-end:

several wheelbarrows full of weeds (cleaning off a "new" area to plant)

torn-up junk mail

coffee grounds & filters

tea bags

tree trimmings
shrub trimmings
eggshells
moldy hot dog buns (yum!)

Can a humble vermicomposter join in? Yes? Great!

Today the worms got:
egg shells
onion skins
garlic skins
hollyhock stalks
dried cut flowers
tea bags
coffee grounds and filters
lettuce trimmings

Breakfast for worms:
potato peels
green bean ends
coffee grounds and filters
tea bags
leftover yucky black beans
onion end
garlic peels

and into the compost pile:
1 defunct mouse - RIP, cute lil feller!

Dead Zinnia's
Dead tomatoe plant. Died from heat and lack of water
Lemons
Onions
Blood Meal since Husband forgot to bag grass clippings when he mowed the lawn.

Wormchow:
tea and coffee stuff
onion & garlic skins
apple cores and peels
celery tops
carrot bottoms and peels
piece of burrito
toilet paper roll
paper towel roll

Onto the compost pile:
lots of garden trimmings

trimmed a few small tree branches--left lay on lawn
cleaned out a flower bed--threw out on lawn

mowed lawn to clean up trimmings and leaves that have fallen
egg shells
moldy tomatoes
old box chex
dry bread
UCG-Starbucks

Worms' Blueplate Special:
Leftover rice
lima beans
another paper towel roll!
a rotten bell pepper
and the usual teabags/coffee grinds and filters/onion/garlic skins

crepe myrtle prunings
carrot, potato, and onion peelings

just UCG today.. I need to give my compost some water and browns tomorrow.

*what's UCG?*

UCG=Used Coffee Grounds

Oddly enough, I was just behind a car with a license plate that said UCG (plus some number). Must have been a composter.

And the wormies got some:
banana peel
dryer lint
another toilet paper roll (*blush*)
and UCG (I'm so proud to be in with the in-crowd).
and a nice big serving of horse manure

Yum yum yum

Comfrey
Worm castings cleaned off a corner of the walkway--converted from scattered shells of birdseed
Brown grocery bag full of fruit peelings
Spider webs
Handful of feathers from discarded goosedown comforter
Steer manure
Dried grass clippings
Dying broccoli

Brush pile also got stacks and stacks of stuff

Herb trimmings piling up and will go somewhere after dried and likely mowed into pieces.

I feel like a wimp next to you all, I fed it trimmings from the garden, roots and strawberry leaves, mint trimmings, rose trimmings etc. We have to be careful not to attract critters, we have raccoons and possums as well as rats right near by.

Worms' All-You-Can-Eat Buffet of the Day:

cardboard egg container
chicken bones
big hunk of apple-zucchini loaf that went bad
egg shell
lettuce & tomato bits
the usual UCG/tea bags/onion & garlic skins

birdtalker- Rose trimmings? You are daring! Mostly I found that the thorns never really decompose and so some time down the road I get pricked fingers. And though my worm bed is outside, for some reason it doesn't get disturbed by any animals, except right now when the squirrels are in a digging frenzy. So putting food in it, even bones, works for me.

Allotment heap: five barrowloads of weeds, grass,comfrey and dead fava plants. It's a mess down there. I've neglected it for weeks because of the foul weather.

Home heap: full vacuum bag, large bag of mouldy runner beans we never got round to eating, pot of vegetable peelings,tea bags, coffee grounds and addresses off envelopes.

Worm bed:
banana peels
greasy paper towels
ucg/utb
onion peels
egg shells
carrot peels and tops and bottoms
lots of horse manure

Just before the start of a new thread...

in the past two days, I've added

UCG from work, w/filters
4 dozen egg shells
two banana peels
2 year old pickled okra
tomato bits
onion bits
bell pepper bits
cereal from the floor
raisins from the floor
strawberry tops
leftover pineapple
old pasta
leftover pasta salad
brussel sprouts
green beans
french fries

and

wood chips from the load (mountain) I had the city drop off.

I'm itching to cut up the pumpkin I have, just so I can add it.

Heh, wonderpets - cereal and raisins from the floor...did you stop by my house? And 2 year old okra - mmm mmm good eatin' for the pile.

4 *dozen* egg shells???

Wow!

Sylvia,

I keep them for a bit before adding them, since they crack up/crush up so much easier when they have dried out. And they are much less slimey.

We buy our eggs by the 2.5 dozen -- as I crack an egg, the shell goes back in the carton. Egg shells from boiled eggs are already in pieces, so those go straight into the next compost donation.

When I have a bunch of egg shells all dried out, I mash them or break them up. It all depends on how destructive I'm feeling at the time.

When hubby is in charge of frying eggs, those shells end up in the compost sooner. I'm surprised he hasn't complained about the empties in the fridge -- the only time he ever said anything was when they got left out and attracted bugs.