What goes in

Feedstock reference tables

Four tables: carbon browns, nitrogen greens, kitchen and home waste, and garden and yard residues. Each material carries its C:N, its moisture, its nitrogen content and a dose for the material you are balancing it against.

Reference

Garden and yard residues: what to compost, what to burn, what to bin

Eighteen materials from the garden, including the four that should never go in a compost pile at all — not because they will not break down, but because they will break down into something you do…

materials: 18
C:N: 0–450
N %: 0.0–2.4
water: 2–85%

15 Oct 2026

Reference

Kitchen and home waste: what goes in, what stays out

Nineteen items from the average kitchen, sorted by whether they belong in a compost pile, a worm tray, a bokashi bucket, or none of the three.

materials: 19
C:N: 0–200
N %: 0.0–9.0
water: 0–95%

01 Oct 2026

Reference

Nitrogen greens: the materials that start the pile and cause the smells

Every smell problem in this log came from the green side. Greens run from 4:1 to 24:1, they are 60-85 % water, and the strongest of them will clear a garden within a day if handled badly.

materials: 11
C:N: 1–30
N %: 1.1–12.0
water: 8–99%

16 Sep 2026

Reference

Carbon browns: the twelve materials worth knowing by number

Cardboard is not leaves is not sawdust. The C:N spread across common browns runs from 45 to 500, and the moisture spread from 5 % to 40 % — picking the wrong brown is how a well-planned pile ends up…

materials: 12
C:N: 50–450
N %: 0.0–0.9
water: 7–40%

04 Sep 2026

Values are typical figures from published sources, not laboratory analyses. Treat a ratio built from them as a working estimate with roughly 10 % error.