I'm impressed at the size of your garden. My entire lawn is only about 4000 sq ft.

As a general rule, you can add anything that has lived to a compost pile. That includes all of the items you listed. Shredding stuff will speed the process, but in the end, it will all compost.

The easiest way to start compost is to just start piling the things in the same place. If you can shred first, that will help, but it isn't necessary.

I use a plastic bin, but many people build bins with pallets or fencing. Some people just use free standing piles.

I use a shovel and a bulb auger to mix my compost, but I've got a fairly small bin (about 10-15 cu ft). If you have a large bin/pile, you may want to use some kind of attachment on the tractor to turn it (I have no experience in this, but I'm sure there's something that would work for you).

You want to keep it moist (but not wet). I wouldn't cover it with plastic unless you have a lot of rain and it is getting too wet. In that case, I might cover it loosely. But you don't want to restrict airflow.

If it starts to smell, it is probably either too wet or it has too much nitrogen. The solution for either of these is to add more high carbon matter (such as leaves, shredded paper, cardboard, sawdust, etc) and to turn it.

If it isn't heating up, it probably needs more nitrogen (manure, coffee grounds, green leaves). And/or it needs to be turned. And/Or it is either too wet or too dry.

I've had batches of compost finish in a couple of weeks and I've had batches that took months. When I was a kid, we had sort of a perpetual compost pile. It was never turned and we just dug compost from the bottom when we needed some finished stuff.

Cherie - a good place to start here is with all the FAQ's. They will cover all the basic info to get you started and also discuss several different ways to do it. Lots of great info there.

Dave

Here is a link that might be useful: Forum FAQ's on composting

Another good source of information is the Florida Online Composting Tutorial linked below.

Here is a link that might be useful: Florida's Online Composting Tutorial

Thanks everyone, I've been raking leaves all day to start my pile and my neighbor later today is going to drop off his garden shredder. I'm almost tempted to check with my neighbors to see if they would like to have a community compost pile. They drop off there yard waste and food scraps and I'll take care of it by turning it, my husband has a mini excavator so I could turn it with the bucket. We all live on 5 acres out here and a lot of us have gardens, who knows they probably are already composting.

Cherie: With that much space and material, you are sitting on a goldmine. Compost will do wonderful things for your garden. Good luck, and have fun.

Karen

For the amount you have, you might consider getting a weanling pig and letting the pig process the garden left overs for you. You'll have to compost the pig's poop under leaves to keep the smell down. Finally at Christmas you can invite the pig to be dinner.