Composting Articles:

• Fast Compost
• Good Ingredients
• Green Materials
• Brown Materials
• What not to add
• Building a Pile
• Using Compost
• Measuring Moisture
• Compost Maturity

Good Compost Ingredients: Green and Brown

The key to making great compost is getting the right mix of ingredients so that the pile breaks down efficiently leaving us with compost that is both rich in nutrients and high in humus.

But before we delve into how much of each ingredient to use, here is a quick overview of the types of materials that we will be adding to our compost pile.

Compost ingredients can be divided into two basic categories, Brown Materials such as leaves, hay, straw and paper, and Green materials such as grass clippings, fresh manure, vegetable trimmings and most green plant cuttings.

To make the categories easier to remember it is often helpful to think of brown materials as hard, dry or dead, and green materials as soft, fresh or wet. There are a few exceptions but it is usually correct.

Next Page: Green Compost Materials »