Gave up on my compost pile after a year - then it actually worked

I started composting in my backyard in Portland two years ago, but after 12 months all I had was a soggy mess that smelled terrible. Turns out I was piling up too many greens and not mixing in enough browns like dry leaves and cardboard. Has anyone else had a compost pile come back to life after they changed one simple thing about how they fed it?

2 comments

2 Comments

wesley80111d ago

Aw man, that soggy mess thing is so real... you really gotta flip the ratio hard. I was drowning in coffee grounds and kitchen scraps for months, everything just turned into a slimy, stinky bog. Then someone told me to aim for way more browns than I thought, like three or four times as much dry leaves and torn up cardboard. Once I started layering that stuff in thick, the whole pile started breathing again and actually warming up. Now I keep a stash of shredded Amazon boxes in the garage just for topping off my greens, no joke that was the single change that saved everything.

juliaa2510d ago

A hundred percent on those Amazon boxes - my garage looks like a paper shredder exploded in it, but at least my compost pile smells like dirt instead of a dead animal this year.