There are two main types of composting with many flavors within each type:

1) The vegetable matter kind, where you mix brown stuff and green stuff and it heats up, and you can do a search and find all sorts of good info on nitrogen and other necessities that go in. These are the kind that heat up, and you remix it and it heats up again, and depending on what you want and how much time you have, you re-mix it again and after its last cool down it's ready for spreading.


2) Worm composting. This is where you throw your vegetable organics in a pile, not mixing grass'n leaves because this will be food for worms. The worms are called red wrigglers, need to be purchased at least once because they are not the same as earthworms, although they look quite similar. The red wrigglers will eat your left over rinds, brown paper, vegetable-dye newspaper, etc. But you don't want the pile to heat up and cook! Red wrigglers will go dormant when the food runs low, and will snooze through a winter if they get enough insulation.

Bones won't compost, fat typically doesn't compost. Peanut and nut shells don't compost.

Most other organics and uncoated paper/ cardboard things do.

Pay attention to what your neighbors will tolerate and make gravity your friend.