Probably depends on your growing zone. I've had good results with Swiss Chard [grows like crazy and reseeds, so waaay more than I can eat, goes on the compost pile]
Nasturtiums .. goes wild in our version of 'winter' weather [gets waaay down into the 40s]and then cooks down quickly in the compost pile]
Lambs Quarters ... always have lots of these. Sometimes use as cooked 'greens', but mostly just either compost or sheet mulch.
New Zealand Spinach ... don't care for the taste, but consider it a natural 'cover crop' that is easily torn up and composted.

Not sure of the nutrients in each of these plants .. all are edible, look nice in the yard until I decide to tear them out, and then are primo composting material that doesn't need a lot of cutting down to size.

I did experiment this year with flax seed scattered willy-nilly around the yard. Very nice results. I thought that the nutrients in the flax might help with plant tissue strength. No proof that is the case, but am pleased with how easy to grow and easy to pull, plus pretty blue flowers.

I'd guess the flax with the oil would be great, don't know if the oil would slow the process down or make it better. I'll look up the most nutritious plants/weeds and then grow them to feed the compost. I want to beef it up to maximum with growing power.

I've heard of Lamb's quarters, too, but not yet in a compost pile.

Thanks!

I got this list from a website, but if it's healthy for you, it must be also healthy for your compost.

Greens in the order of most nutritious:

1. Dandelion: use young leaves.
2. Arugula: Slight mustard green flavor.
3. Kale: Use young leaves.
4. Parsley: Helps bring out the flavor of others.
5. Romaine: Somewhat strong taste.
6. Spinach: High in nutrients but contains oxalates.
7. Beet: Best if you use young and small leaves.
8. Butter: Lettuce
9. Endive: Contains oxalates. May affect calcium absorption.
10. Iceberg: Most popular lettuce, least nutritious.

The top ten fruits and vegetables in overall nutritional content:

1. Broccoli - Broccoli is a vegetable very much like spinach. Broccoli is the superhero of the vegetable kingdom!
2. Cantaloupe - The orange color of cantaloupe's flesh relfects its extremely high beta-carotene content, which converts to vitamin A in the body.
3. Carrots - Carrots are nutritional heroes, they store a gold mine of nutrients.
4. Kale - Unusually rich in the minerals and vitamins provided by green leafy foods.
5. Mango - Cholesterol
   free. High in vitamin A and vitamin C.
6. Papaya - Papaya contains the digestive enzyme papain, which helps your body break down and digest proteins.
7. Pumpkin - The bright orange color of pumpkin is a dead giveaway that pumpkin is loaded with an important antioxidant, beta-carotene.
8. Red bell Peppers - Peppers are full of vitamins C and A, as well as folate. They are also high in fiber.
9. Spinach - This lovely, leafy green is not only flavorful, it is a nutritional power house.
10. Sweet Potato - The sweet potato
    deserves to be on the highest perch because it is a nutritional powerhouse supplying many nutrients.

I'm surprised how cantaloupe made high on the list. I'm willing to give the rind up, but not the cantaloupe. Wonder if it's different in compost nutritionally?

Here is a link that might be useful: Greens

Well I go by a different criteria. I believe the plants with the deepest roots will have the minerals necessary for good plant health. I Could be wrong but root plants with well known deep reaching roots would be beets, alfalfa, dandelion, hardwood trees, But like us a varied diet is more than likely the best answer.

Curt

Is this to grow in your garden during winter or to encourage in your lawn during summer?

If it is for growing during the off-seasons on your gardening area, cover crops like vetch, clover, buckwheat, and winter rye are all great, but is better to mow them and leave them lying as mulch to improve the soil.

Greg

Yarrow is said to be a 'compost accelerator' so will speed up decomposition. I often pull wild yarrow to add to mine. Clover might be a good one to compost if you have the plants growing wild - I know it makes a good cover crop. I also think alfalfa plants would be good to compost as the long roots bring up minerals from deep in the soil. I don't have the plants so use alfalfa tea as a fertilizer.

I think a mix of 'ingredients' makes the best compost.

The best plant for compost I know of is comfrey (sterile Bocking 14 cultivar).
It has very deep roots and is considered a class-A dynamic accumulator.
While it's dormant in winter, it grows like mad the rest of the time and the leaves can be harvested many times during the season.
It makes really effective 'tea', but is incredibly stinky, so only consider that if you don't have close neighbours!
The only caveat is that while sterile comfrey won't self-seed, and it doesn't spread much, any bit of root will grow, so definately don't plant it where you'll disturb the roots.
My other favourite is fava beans. They have the advantage of being leguminous, carboniferous, nutricious and delicious!

Scarlet - nutritious for the compost heap is not the same as nutritious for you. pippimac has got there first but do take a look at comfrey. And note that the 'tea' mentioned is compost tea, not tea for you!

Here is a link that might be useful: comfrey

The best plant for your compost is the weed that is most prolific in your garden :-)

I should think perhaps legumes, roots and all. Old farmers would sometimes plant alfalfa, harvest about three crops of hay and then 'plow it under'. Were it me I think I would do a vetch of some sort.

However comfrey seems to be the current number one recommendation.

i have heard that comfrey is very good. also like someone said, those deep rooted weeds are full of nutrients they have pulled from the soil around them (dandelions). and i have also heard nettles are great. either to make a compo0st tea or just to cut up and add to the pile. BUT DONT TOUCH THE NETTLES!use heavy gloves. my neighbour has a biggie growing in his raspberry patch and when i was picking i got stung a few times. it hurt for a couple of days!

Yeah, it might be a winter crop in between the leaf piles, but the leaf piles will cover worm trenches. I have nettle, yarrow, but I'll have to buy comfrey seeds I can plant, plus I'm already starting to mulch over my garden area. All the things as weeds growing in my garden are mostly the bur marigold I planted as a flower, didn't know it was what was bred with pretty marigold in a hybrid marigold that took my garden over, the seed would produce the ugliest marigold I've ever seen, but the plant is being tested for hepatitis vaccines. It's used in a lot of medicine research, so it might be truly a medicinal plant.

I dug a small trench, put in lots of potato and carrot peelings, put in a layer of dried bur marigold stems, lots of tea and coffee grounds on top, then another layer of the marigolds, then the dirt I dug out of it. I'm hoping to attract worms next to my only living squash plant that just now has 2 female acorn squash on them, planted in June.

Deep rooted plants are what I'll look for, I know ragweed is one of them, I can transplant some dandelions out there in the yard. This does help. I think I even asked this question before. Sorry if it's a repeat. I have yellow dock seeds too, that was supposed to be a ground cover for this winter, I forgot I bought those.

So comfrey, dandelion, ragweed, yellow dock, yarrow, and nettle, that should do as well as I can for this year. Weeds stay green most of the year until maybe the end of December, so I've got 3 more growing months of weeds, shame a garden doesn't grow well into December.

Thanks again. Everyone who helped me last year finding my soil type were greatly appreciated. It surely was a big change seeing the squash and pumpkin get so huge with the year before be so pitiful and small. I'll never not compost and I learned a good lesson, so did a lot of people who doubted my composting. It's new to this area where lime and manure are the only fix for local gardens. I did plant some green manures like rye grass seed, but I didn't like the result, couldn't tell in that are any better, I still have seed, but I'll leave the rye out.

I am going to cut the green manure to use as greens for the worm trenches, sorry if I lost the whole point to the post, but I can grow it beside the trench as a green manure, collect the leaves or top the plant as it grows, for composting material.

Sorry if I lost the original point to the post.

Depending upon how cold the fall and winter, you should be able to grow winter greens such as turnips, cabage, kale, and collard greens during winter in zone 7. If the daytime temps stay below freezing and/or nighttime temps are cold enough to freeze the ground, these greens will stop growing until it warms back up a bit.

These will all produce greens above ground for feeding yourself and/or the worms. The roots are good for soil tilth as well. You could plant spinach and get some "Popeye The Sailor-man" strength Night-crawlers that could really loosen up some soil. They might be strong enough earth-movers to qualify as "Caterpillars". (Sorry, but I could not resist the pun.)

Rather than planting invasive weeds in your garden that you will have to fight to kill for many springs and summers to come, an annual cover would create far less work for yourself and be more effective. Cover crops like hairy vetch, clover, buckwheat, and winter rye have been used for decades and are still excellent.

You said you planted rye grass and were not happy with the result. Winter "Cereal" rye works great as a cover crop, while annual rye grass works better for winter lawns and pastures. Perennial rye grass works for more northern lawns, where Fescue might also be used. Annual or Perennial rye grass are turf grass that respond well to mowing or grazing. Winter rye, aka cereal rye, is an excellent winter cover crop. The difference between rye grass and winter cereal rye, is like the difference between your lawn grass and wheat or corn growing in a field. Small tender blades of grass versus big bulky straw producing stems that are great for your soil.

Rather than cutting it down cover crops during winter, you should let them grow into tall stalks, which will produce dense roots underground and an excellent mulch when it is mowed before planting in the spring. Winter rye, hairy vetch, crimson clover, and buckwheat planted together are one of the best way to improve soils during fall and winter months. Once temperatures are below 60, your worms should not be fed, because they will not be eating, and the food you provide will rot and may kill the worms. The roots from a dense cover crop will loosen the soil during winter. When spring comes, and you mow down the cover crop, its dead roots will provide excellent food for your worms when temperatures rise, and they begin feeding again. The roots of the cover crop also help promote beneficial mycorrhizal fungi in your soil.

Here is a link that might be useful: WINTER RYE: A RELIABLE COVER CROP

No idea why my post came up a couple of times.
scarletdaisies, one of the things that makes Bocking 14 comfrey so awesome is its sterility.
You don't want comfrey that sets seed or you'll have a real weed problem.
It needs to be started from roots, and you only need to chop one root up and you'll have that many plants
(take heed: don't get roots in your compost!)
Comfrey's an organic and permaculture gardener's favourite, so ask around. People will be dividing it around now.
I've got a feeling you're somewhere pretty hot and dry, so I must emphasise, I live in a temperate Southern Hemisphere climate...YMMV!

"Yeah, it might be a winter crop..." Scarlet - comfrey is a wonderful addition to your compost heap and source of fertiliser but it is not a winter green manure. It is a perennial which will be a permanent feature for years so it needs to be planted somewhere out of the way where it can be left undisturbed. It is not really suitable for growing in your main garden area amongst crops. Also, although the crown is more or less evergreen, it will not be producing a lot of leaves through the winter, especially in z7.

BTW burr marigold, Bidens sp. cannot cross with either Tagetes or Calendula, so I'm not sure what your ugly 'marigolds' were. The common name may be 'marigold' but the three are distinct genera.

Comfrey is best, next is clover,alfalfa,lentils,Green oak leave are go too.

Partially decomposed hard wood chips - grows a fungus which will kill nematodes.
also high in potassium.
willow wood chips - root stimulant
alfalfa will stimulate growth with octacosanol
high in silica - strengthens against fungus
comfrey - cell proliferant
horseradish greens, garlic, mustard seed
- suppresses fungus
thistle - high in silica
if allowed to grow to full maturity
silica strengthens plants against fungus
allow plants to mature, but not seed, before mowing
burdock leaf - oligosacharides
encourage beneficial bacteria
Stinging nettle - growth stimulant, fungicidal

They have the advantage of being leguminous, carboniferous, nutricious and delicious!

You grew them 360 million years ago?

Stinging nettles work really well. I've been fermenting the ones I pulled from my garden in a plastic bottle and they produce a lot of great nutrients. Most of the liquid I've been diluting with water and using it directly onto my plants and the remaining mush gets tossed onto the compost. It's a pretty stinky job but it works

The whole premise of this thread is wrong! We don't grow plants to feed to our compost, we make compost to feed our plants!

Allen,
That's what I was thinking. I admit I love composting, and the whole scientific, miraculous process intrigues me. But, for me, the purpose of composting is to use waste materials in a way that is friendly to the environment. I'm also in a suburb where there just isn't space to even consider growing large quantities of a certain plant just to return it to the compost pile. But, if others enjoy the process enough that they are willing to put this kind of effort into it, more power to them.

Martha

I was thinking along the lines of the previous two posts, but it's an interesting question to ask because it looks at the process from the opposite direction, and you never know what revelations may come out of that.

If one is composting material originating from the same place where the compost will go, it seems that the 'most nutritious' inputs will have extracted all that nutrition from the soil. If we assume it's a closed loop process. Particularly in terms of minerals, which pretty much just go round and round, as opposed to organic matter which interacts dynamically with water and air. That said, the deep rooted ones that could bring minerals from subsoil would be a good idea.

Otherwise, I'm not sure I see the advantage, unless we're talking about importing OM from another plot of land to make compost.

Rather than think of one plant as being the most nutritious think more in terms of using a wide variety of plants, because different plants better utilize differant nutrients and a variety of plant material will provide the most nutritious compost.

I absolutely believe it's legitimate to grow a crop simply to compost it and then add it back to the soil. Isn't that one of the cornerstones of organic gardening? One book I was reading recommended allotting 60% of your garden space to cover cropping. Not only is it healthy for the soil to be continually cropped (within reason - I know the winter is limiting in some areas), but all plants are factories for creating OM, removing carbon from the atmosphere and then returning it to the soil during composting. That said, legumes have to be the kings of cover crops because they are the only plants that add N to the soil instead of consuming it.

I don't completely understand the enthusiasm for comfrey. I see that it is deep-rooted and therefore effective at bringing subsurface minerals into the topsoil, but it is also N hungry and does not fix N from the atmosphere like legumes.

Stinging nettle, elderberry, burdock and Canadian thistle are a few of the known nitrate accumulators. In fact, some of these will accumulate nitrate to such a high concentration that they literally explode when burned. Nitrate is explosive.

Here is a link that might be useful: Building Up Soil

Clarification: legumes do not 'add nitrogen to the soil.' Legumes take advantage of bacteria that fix nitrogen from the atomosphere by taking up some of the nitrogen themselves. There's no excess nitrogen leaching out from the nodules into the soil. The only time you get nitrogen in the soil from legumes is when you plow them under at the end of their growing season. Which is exactly what farmers do. If you pulled up all the legumes growing in your garden, including roots, and threw them away, there would be no net nitrogen benefit to your soil.

That is the first I've heard of exploding plants, and I suppose it could be true if the plants were dried out well and put into a hot fire. But consider: Nitrate itself is not explosive, only when combined with other ingredients. For example potassium nitrate is completely stable, but when mixed with powdered charcoal and sulfur, it makes gunpowder. Ammonium nitrate is explosive if you mix it with a combustible fuel like petroleum. I suppose it's possible that the organic matter in the plant could combine with high nitrate levels...

But is nitrogen really in the form of nitrate in plant tissues? That's a salt, and I thought most plant nitrogen was in the form of proteins, and would have to be decomposed by microbes first to form nitrate.

Just a few random thoughts from the chemist.

The question of which plants are most "nutritious" for a compost bin is a little odd. Composting is all about balance. Too many greens and some of the value will just gas off. All browns are not created equal. There's more to this than simply growing the ultimate greens. Example: a huge amount of calcium can't be processed in the absence of potassium. The best compost will have a good mix of ingredients. Being so technical would really suck the fun out of it!

My point of view is different as I love the idea of taking things that most would throw away and using them to grow food for my family and friends. The idea of using garden space to grow compost additions is weird to me. Why not grow edibles and compost the leftovers at the end of the season? A much more natural cycle IMO.

@sandy16, the reason organic gardeners devote garden space to growing cover crops is that the production of most vegetables creates a nitrogen deficiency in most soils. Most conventional gardeners and farmers compensate by adding commercial fertilizers. If you don't want to use commercial fertilizers, the only way to get the extra N into your soil is to grow crops that fix N (legumes) or bring N-rich materials from elsewhere into your garden and add them to the soil.

rickd - a legume cover crop to fix nitrogen is an entirely different concept than growing a cover crop to compost it. FWIW those legumes can be edible and still fix nitrogen.

sandy16 - IMO, it doesn't matter whether the cover crop is tilled into the soil or cut down and thrown on the compost pile and then tilled into the soil after composting. The total amount of N added to the soil is going to be about the same.

The way I understand it, the longer a legume is allowed to mature, the more N is accumulated by the plant. But as it matures, the N is concentrated more and more in the seed as opposed to the roots. If you harvest the seed to eat it, you've reduced the total N that can be returned to the soil (there will still be some in the root nodules though). In any case, growing legumes causes a net increase in soil N. Compare this to growing corn, which fixes no N and if you don't add loads of N to the soil in the form of fertilizer, it will deplete your soil of N.

Hello Everyone,

Is there a way or method to determine if an area of grass (TTF) is moved into dormancy or is it completely dead?

Thanks!

Hi Walt. In my own yard, grass can turn brown in hot dry weather, but comes back when it cools off and rains. You could water it to see if it responds in a few days. But there's no way to control the temperature, so if it's very hot, it may not respond as fast to watering as it would at lower temps. It may also vary depending upon the type of grass.

It would probably be better to post this as a new post or thread, rather than adding it to an unrelated topic thread. You will get more responses. Also, you may get better info in the Lawn forum. :-]

I understand Kudzu is quite prolific, hardy and can generare a wealth of greens for a compost pile. I'm planning on trying some as compost fodder.

sandy16 - IMO, it doesn't matter whether the cover crop is tilled into the soil or cut down and thrown on the compost pile and then tilled into the soil after composting. The total amount of N added to the soil is going to be about the same

This statement is incorrect. It is well known that composting green stuff will typically send 50% of N back in the atmosphere. If you want all the N, you bury the organic matter.

"It is well known that composting green stuff will typically send 50% of N back in the atmosphere."

I'd be interested in reading sources for this.

Lloyd