You can toss plain cardboard in your compost bin, just make sure to shred it into smaller pieces first. This helps the cardboard break down faster.

Adding diseased leaves to your compost pile increases the risk that the disease spreads to other plants. Instead, get rid of them in the garbage.

Pickles can throw off the pH balance of compost, plus the salt in the brine can be harmful to plants. It’s fine to add a couple pickles to your compost—moderation is key. Likely, you won’t have to worry about making this decision, because leftover pickles are pretty hard to come by!

You can go ahead and toss human hair into your compost pile, giving you even more reason for at-home haircuts! If you have an all-out spa day with manicures and pedicures, you can add the nail clippings to your compost too, as long as they are free from nail polish.

Leave your sourdough bread on the counter for too long, or find some odd ends of loaves in the freezer? Then toss them into your compost pile! Bread decomposes fairly quickly and adds nitrogen to compost. To help keep pests from being attracted to the bread, add it deep within the pile to minimize the odor.

When added to your compost pile, uncooked rice can attract pests, and cooked rice can encourage unwanted bacterial growth. Instead, toss any spoiled rice in the garbage.

Eggshells will add calcium to your compost when disposed of in the pile. Calcium is important for plants to grow strong.

After you rake up the leaves during your fall landscape cleanup, add them to your compost. Since leaves add a source of carbon to your compost pile, balance that out with materials high in nitrogen like grass clippings or kitchen scraps.

While cow and horse manure are often added to gardens, avoid adding dog waste to your garden. Parasites in the waste can survive in a compost pile, risking infection to other pets or even humans.

Walnuts and their shells release a chemical called juglone, something that’s toxic to some plants, including tomatoes. Sort of like how adding a couple pickles won’t ruin your entire compost pile, the same goes with adding a few walnuts, but to be on the safe side, you should toss them in the trash.