Many composting articles on blogs or other websites commonly refer to a carbon to nitrogen ratio, or simply C:N, that needs to be met for proper composting to occur. This is the ratio of carbon to nitrogen in a given material. They don’t always include a list though, so it can be hard to figure out what ratio your compost may have with materials you add to it. So I have compiled one for you so you don’t have to look all over the place like I did.
I would also like to make this list more authoritative by not simply reiterating what other blogs have stated, which seems like the norm. I instead went looking for credible sources for this list, sources like universities or government agencies. Sources that have information from what was likely a study on compost.
This is only a list though not an article, so if you want to learn more about the C:N ratio and why it is important you can read my article on compost here.
There are two lists below, one for nitrogen rich sources of compost feedstock and the other is a list of carbon rich feedstock. I have included some things more than once or at least it seems that way by the name. I did this only when the sources had very different results, and these differences may be due to location or some other factor I cannot think of at the moment. Different locations may have different material with similar names, or any number of combinations of factors that alter the C:N ratio.
This is a big list so if you are having trouble finding something, just remember to use “ctrl+f” to find what you are looking for. Just keep is simple, use a word like “poultry” not “organic free range chicken manure”.
I hope this helps any of you out there trying to find a good list of C:N ratios. It should really help when you are mixing materials together for composting. Now you don’t have to guess so much.
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