From the Dirt Doctor site:

Compost is Nature's own living fertilizer that can be made at home or purchased ready-to-use. A compost pile can be started any time of the year and can be in sun or shade. Good ingredients include leaves, clean hay, grass clippings, tree trimmings, food scraps, bark, sawdust, rice hulls, weeds, nut hulls and animal manure. Mix the ingredients together in a container of wood, hay bales, hog wire, concrete blocks or simply pile the material on the ground. The best mixture is 80% vegetative matter and 20% animal waste, although any mix will compost. Since oxygen is a critical component, the ingredients should be a mix of coarse and fine-textured material to promote air circulation through the pile. Turn the pile once a month if possible, more often speeds up the process but releases nitrogen to the air. Another critical component is water. A compost pile should be roughly the moisture of a squeezed-out sponge to help the living microorganisms thrive and work their magic. Compost is ready to use as a soil amendment when the ingredients are no longer identifiable. The color will be dark brown, the texture soft and crumbly and it will smell like the forest floor. Rough, unfinished compost can be used as a topdressing mulch around all plantings.

The other compost thread has to do with animal waste, but I'll post this here on the more comprehensive discussion. If the compost is hot enough and/or old enough, the heat of the pile and the microorganisms in the pile take care of the seeds, the sedge nuts, and the animal waste contents. Compost isn't just a passive pile of stuff sitting down at the bottom of the yard. It need to be tended and treated as an important part of the whole garden process. If this is accomplished, you'll have a healthy and inexpensive way to improve the health of your gardens.

SRS