List of things you can compost.
Lawn clippings, hedge cuttings, weeds, lawn edgings, old fruit and vegetables, vegetable peelings, potato peelings, old bedding plants, twigs, shredded newspaper and cardboard, nettles, raked leaves, almost any green plant material you might find in your garden.
List of things you cannot compost.
Meat, bones, animal mess, cat litter, dead animals, large branches, cooked food at anything that won’t break down easily.
Can you compost raspberry canes? You could certainly use them to make a base for your compost pot, they are quite woody and tough though some may need a lot of time to break down.
Can you compost potato haulms? You can as long as they do not having disease.
Can I compost cat Litter made from sawdust? If you’re going to have a very efficient compost heap that gets hot then you probably could, for most people you probably shouldn’t. You certainly shouldn’t put any animal waste on from pets that have been treated with medicines such as worming tablets.
Can I put old newspaper on my compost heap? You can, but don’t the one in large amounts, you might want to shred it, or soak it to make sure it gets the really damp.
Do I have to turn my compost heap? No! You don’t have to, but when you come to use the compost heap you will find that some of it hasn’t got it down so you should put this aside for your next compost bin.
Do I need more than one compost bin? If you have room for more than one, it’s the next one way of creating a composting system. You can fill one bed and leave it much too slowly for the other. When you’ve let one pile compost decompose you can use the compost and put the bad compost in the other pile.
It takes me a long time for the compost bin, is this a problem? No, you will just take longer to make compost. If you have a small garden, or only make a very small amount of waste, then you might consider a word tree as this is a more efficient option for small quantities of household vegetable waste.
I have a large lawn, I end up with a huge pile of lawn clippings, will be rot down into compost? It will do, even if you just put in a huge pile and leave it. It will probably go through quite slimy revolting stage first, but if you have a large garden leave in a far corner and stop worrying about it. It might take a couple of years to fully compost, but it will become home to lots of worms who break down the grass. One grass cuttings compost heap that I’ve seen hacks the largest worms I’ve ever seen!
