Leaves from broadleaf/deciduous trees tend to compost easily, whether they’re fresh from pruning or have fallen of their own accord.

Fresh green leaves and ones that are brown and soggy from rain or the like compost down the fastest but dried/crunchy leaves often need a bit of a helping hand to actually rot rather than just break into small pieces — stir them into a moist heap to get things moving along.

Leaves add useful bulk to a compost heap but if you’ve got a LOT to get rid of in the autumn, consider collecting them in their own bin, cage or sack – they’ll probably take a little longer to break down than a regular mixed compost heap but the resulting leafmould is a good soil improver, lawn conditioner and mulch (which can be used for weed suppression or for hilling up potatoes etc).

A few warnings about composting leaves

• Some deciduous leaves are tougher than others – for example, sycamore usually take longer to break down than oak. Help them on their way by making sure they’re moist. You can also throw them through a shredder/run them over with a lawnmower – the smaller pieces will break down quicker.
• Holly leaves, rhododendrons, conifers and other evergreens will take a sweet age to break down in a regular compost heap because their leaves are tougher and water-resistant. Either dispose of them through your council’s local green waste service or set up a special slow compost bin that you can forget about for a few years.
• Don’t compost diseased leaves or leaves from diseased trees. The composting cycle might not be hot enough to kill the bugs and the resulting compost might help the disease to keep spreading.

However, they break down VERY slowly so it helps to crush them up first. That way, the small particles can sit in the soil while they break down rather than just sitting in a lump on the surface.

Before composting – or instead of it, egg shells can actually be reused or recycled around the home or garden in a number of ways. (My favourite method for recycling egg shells: bake the shells to kill any nasties, then feed crushed eggs back to our chickens. They reabsorb and recycle the calcium to make more eggs!)

Normal newspaper adds lots of great carbon to a compost heap – soaking up excess moisture and if they’re scrunched up, helping air circulate in the heap and prevent it from becoming too compacted.

Newspaper will rot down quicker if it’s damp but for best results, try to alternate layers with other matter – ideally fresh green stuff like garden clippings or veg peelings.

Avoid heavy stacks of newspaper as they’ll take longer to break down and shut off air to the rest of the heap – if you’ve got a lot of newspaper to get rid of, it would be better to recycle it through your paper recycling bin instead.

Oh, while newspapers are great, don’t compost glossy colour supplements or leaflets that came in the paper though. Recycle those too instead.

Also see: Recycle This for How can I reuse or recycle old newspapers?

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.

Nettles are considered a natural composting accelerator, especially if you’ve got a “brown“-heavy heap.

You can also use nettles to make a liquid fertiliser for the garden – ferment them in rainwater at a ratio of 10:1 for a few weeks, either in a covered bucket or an old fizzy pop bottle. The result is an iron rich solution that’s great for promoting the growth of green leaves and for building up humus in the soil.

If you are worried about them regrowing or creating a nettle jungle in your garden when you finally use your compost (or using the liquid fertiliser), chop up the plants and avoid composting the roots to get the maximum nettle benefit for the minimum risk.

Away from composting etc, don’t forget that you can also harvest young nettles for use in the kitchen: they can be wilted like spinach or used to make a herbal tea.

Corrugated cardboard typically adds bulk to your compost, helps preserve the necessary air flow and soaks up excess moisture too. (Other raw fibreboard items like egg boxes or toilet roll tubes work in the same way.)

In composting terms, it’s a brown item: make sure you add it alongside fresh greens – like kitchen scraps or garden cuttings – to your compost heap balanced and as it sucks up moisture, add extra liquid if your compost pile has a tendency to be on the dry side. (Cardboard rots down much quicker if it’s wet and torn into small pieces – tearing it up is easier if it’s damp too.)

A couple of warnings though: do peel off any plastic packaging tape/document pockets as they won’t compost and be careful when composting shiny cardboards – that shininess is often the result of a plastic coating or using other synthetic materials.

Moisture is an essential part of the composting process and it can come from things like leftover black coffee – the liquid stuff – as well as water. Leave it to cool a bit before adding it though, so avoid scalding the decomposition microbes.

(Don’t compost milky or creamed coffee – the dairy might attract rats or other unwanted visitors to your heap. The same goes for dairy substitutes like CoffeeMate – the oils might be just as tempting.)

Coffee grounds are also a great addition to compost heaps. Contrary to logic, they’re a “green” – very nitrogen heavy – so great for balancing out carbon-heavy compost heap (ones that include lots of things like cardboard or dried leaves). (That said, if you’re producing a lot of spent grounds, be careful not to overdose your heap – no more than 25% of your heap should be made up of coffee grounds.)

Worms are also said to be coffee-fiends – they love chomping their way through the grounds in wormeries and compost heaps — and that’s always a good thing for composting.

You can compost most coffee filters too – they’re made from paper. (Though ones with a “heat sealed” edge may include a small amount of synthetic materials at the join.)

There is anecdotal evidence that coffee grounds can help made soils more acidic (which is sometimes desirable) and also help protect delicate plants from slugs and snails. Other people pooh-pooh both ideas but as coffee grounds are such a rich nitrogen resource, a soil improver and will rot down pretty quickly in soil, it doesn’t really hurt to try!

Also see:
For other ideas about what to do with coffee grounds, see the Recycle This article on that very subject…

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.

(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?