If you’ve got a whole pumpkin (or jack o’lantern) to compost, cut it up into chunks or slices first to encourage faster composting. Alternatively, if you’ve got chickens or wild birds visiting your garden, let them peck at the flesh first – that’ll reduce the amount you have to compost.

Don’t forget you can roast pumpkin seeds for a tasty snack – scoop them out and wash away the fibrous strands, then roast them or dry fry them for a few minutes. If you don’t fancy roasting & eating them, wild birds and chickens like them too – though you might want to roughly chop them up first.

You can also use the seeds for crafts – see How Can I Recycle This? for things to do with them.

Because they require such a warm climate for germination/growing on, the seeds are unlikely to grow into new plants in compost heaps in the UK but you can scoop them out before composting to save for growing on elsewhere (such as in a greenhouse or on a sunny window sill).

Fresh chilli peppers are “greens“: if you’ve got a LOT, add alongside carbon-based matter to keep the compost balanced.

The flesh of the fruit will rot down very quickly but the stones will take a lot longer – if you intend to use your compost in your garden in the near future, the stones might be annoying lumps.

You can read about other things to do with olive stones on How Can I Recycle This?

(That might not sound like a big deal in most circumstances – you can just pull up the plants as you would any unwanted weed or even transplant them and grow them on to full plants – but some people might want to avoid the extra work.)

If you grow your own veg and the tomatoes were tasty enough to be worth it, you can save the seeds for sowing properly – use a ferminating method to reduce the likelihood of seed-born diseases or saving bad seeds. (However, keep in mind that many supermarket tomatoes are from hybrid plants so might not grow “true”.)

Also see: Can I Compost Tomato Plants/Vines?

Be aware though that potatoes have a tendency to grow into new potatoes if left whole in the compost heap. On one hand, free potatoes! On the other hand, you might not want the plants to be growing there (and growing store-bought potatoes can sometimes introduce disease into your garden)… Chop them up to lessen the risk and if there is any signs of disease (particularly blight), don’t compost them in case the virus/spores aren’t killed by the composting cycle.

Potato peeling and skins rot down quickly without any risk of regrowth (though the same virus/disease issue still applies).

Also see: Can I Compost Potato Plants?

As they’re a root that stores well, it takes them a good while to start breaking down if they’re left whole – cut them into chunks to encourage the process.

Sweet potato skin – peelings or otherwise left over skin – will rot down quite quickly.

However, as they’re a root vegetable, they’re not too keen to rot down that quickly – cut them up into smaller pieces if you want them to break down faster. Peelings rot down super fast.

Alternatively, if you’ve got chickens, rabbits or other small animals that like to nibble greens, you can regrow the ferny leaf part of the carrot plant by popping your carrot tops in a saucer of water. (The root vegetable won’t regrow but the green bit will come back.)

Carrots are greens: if you’ve got LOTS, add alongside carbon-based matter to keep the compost balanced.

Though the pods may seem pretty tough compared to more edible bean pods (like runner beans), they will still compost down quickly.

If you’re adding them in great quantities, try to include some “browns” (such as dried leaves, newspaper or straw) at the same time to keep the heap balanced.

(In fact, the ‘Compost This’ team would very much recommended composting them instead of ingesting them. Bleugh.)

The outer leaves will rot down fairly quickly; the supposedly edible buds will take a little longer – chop them in half if you want to be rid of the evil things more quickly.

Cooked Brussels sprouts can be composted as long as they’ve not been cooked with anything on the “don’t compost” list – like meat or with lots of oils/fats – because those things can attract rats and other unwanted visitors to your heap.

If you’ve grown your own, you can also compost the stems – they’re pretty tough though so will take a while for them to rot down. Chop them up a bit to both speed up the composting process and to avoid them clogging up your compost heap in the meantime. Also, whatever you do, do NOT use the resulting compost to grow more Brussels sprouts — there is no horticultural reason but if we’ve not made it clear enough already, BRUSSELS SPROUTS TASTE HORRIBLE so you should just grow something nicer instead ;)