Can you compost citrus?
Yes. The advice to keep citrus out of compost is largely a myth carried over from worm bins, where it genuinely is a problem. A normal compost pile handles orange, lemon and lime peel without difficulty. Below: whether you can compost citrus, why, how much to add, and the mistakes that cause trouble.
Why
The concerns are that citrus is acidic and that d-limonene in the peel is antimicrobial. Both are true in isolation and neither matters much at domestic quantities. Peel is a small fraction of any pile, and the finished compost’s pH is buffered by everything else in it.
Citrus is a green: wet, nitrogen-bearing and fast to rot once broken up.
How to add it
Chop it. Whole halves of orange peel are dense and slow; quartered or shredded peel disappears in a season.
Mix it through rather than adding a large quantity in one layer.
Common mistakes
Putting large amounts in a worm bin. This is where the myth comes from, and there it is real. Worms genuinely avoid citrus and the acidity affects a small closed system.
Adding whole fruit and expecting it to break down quickly. It will not.
Where the evidence is genuinely mixed
Some studies find d-limonene suppresses certain microbes at high concentrations. Nothing suggests this matters at the proportions a household produces. If you juice commercially and have kilos of peel daily, that is a different question.
Related
More materials in the material library. New to this? How to compost.
Further reading on compost citrus
Independent sources worth reading alongside this page: EPA, Composting at Home · Cornell Waste Management Institute.