Finally realized my compost pile was all wrong after 2 years

I kept wondering why my compost just smelled like rotten garbage and never broke down. Then my neighbor who gardens like crazy asked if I was adding enough browns. I was basically just throwing in kitchen scraps and grass clippings, like a 90% green to 10% brown ratio. She showed me her pile with layers of shredded cardboard and dry leaves, and it hit me. Has anyone else been doing it backwards this whole time?

3 comments

3 Comments

holly70916d ago

@phoenix_martin40 same here with the Amazon boxes thing, it's wild how cardboard is like the secret ingredient nobody tells you about. Did you figure out the right ratio or are you still winging it like me?

phoenix_martin4016d ago

Lol oh man I feel personally attacked by this because I literally did the exact same thing for like a year. I had this sad wet pile of slimy spinach and banana peels that just smelled like death and attracted every fly in the neighborhood. I thought I was a compost genius just dumping all my veggie scraps in there and calling it a day. Then my neighbor casually asked where my brown layer was and I was like.......brown layer??? lmao. Now I hoard Amazon boxes like a crazy person just so I can rip them up and mix them in.

harperp2416d ago

Had a buddy who tried the same thing, except he was a full on engineer who thought he had it all figured out. He built this whole PVC pipe system and was so proud of it, bragging about his "compost reactor." Then after a month his backyard smelled like a dumpster fire and his wife made him move it to the far corner. He finally called me crying basically, asking what went wrong. I told him about the brown layer thing and he was just like "you mean I have to put the same cardboard and dead leaves I was throwing away? that's the secret?" Yeah man, it really is that simple.