Mazuria Ecolodges

Compost is a story of good proportion of carbonaceous materials and nitrogen. The best for micro-organisms actors of the compost (they produce proteins from nitrogen and minerals and find their energy from sugars from the carbonaceous material in decay) is to have 30 to 40 times more carbon than nitrogen
The compost materials rich in nitrogen are :

• Lawn clippings
• Young green and tender plant materials,
• Waste-meat or fish
• Peel and kitchen leftovers
• Urine
• Faeces
• Droppings of pets
• Chicken manure
• Strawed manure already composted

The compost materials rich in carbon are :

• Leaves of oak or sycamore
• Stalks dried flowers
• Old-wood and bark
• Oat, barley or wheat straw
• Sawdust and wood chips
• Paper
• Cardboard

The compost materials already having a good C / N ratio are :

• Leaves of fruit trees, alder, elder, hazel and ash
• Hay
• Spring-size shrubs
• Fresh straw-manure from horses, cattle, sheep, rabbits and goats

Tips:

• Rake dead leaves with the lawn mower, they will be crushed and mixed with the grass and everything will be a perfect starting point for the compost heap
• Absolutely avoid a large pile of freshly mowed grass on your compost heap, let grass dry before or mix it with carbonaceous materials before
• Coarsely grind all the carbonaceous material, it will be composted easily and participate in aerate the compost heap
• If you compost essentially left over of the kitchen, recover untreated sawdust and mix it with your waste
• Limit citrus fruits because they are too acid, in all cases turn into small pieces skins
• Limit bones and fish bones because they are slow to decompose. In all cases grind them with a hammer for example, before putting them on the compost heap
• Moderate intake of wood ash (rich in minerals but with lots of lime disrupting microorganisms)
• Lawyers and cabbage are to be introduced into small pieces
• Hulls almonds, walnuts and hazelnuts must well crushed before joining your compost heap
• Shellfish and egg shells will be even crushed and added in small quantities
• Do not hesitate to compost fruit and vegetables rotted naturally (but not those with diseases!)
• Avoid seeds, which will tend to sprout on the compost, add only dry roots and crush the potatoes so that they will not grow on the compost heap
• Add dregs and tea bags but only if the filters or bags are made of paper
• Compost tissues and paper towels, toilet paper and wipes if any are neither bleached or colored or flavored
• Paper and cardboard can be composted into smaller pieces if they are virgins glue, ink and color. But it will be better to recycle them
• If you want to compost human excrements (from your dry toilet for example), you should take few precautions and use activated straw (see the toilet rubric in this site)

Good composting!