Neighbor told me my compost pile was too wet and I finally fixed it

Honestly I had been throwing everything in my backyard compost bin for like a year and it just smelled terrible and never broke down. My neighbor who runs a community garden walked by last Tuesday and said my pile was basically a swamp because I was adding too many kitchen scraps without enough brown material. She told me I needed a 3 to 1 ratio of browns to greens and to cover it with a tarp when it rains. I went out that weekend and mixed in a bunch of dry leaves and shredded cardboard from my recycling bin. Within two weeks the smell was gone and I actually saw steam coming off it when I turned it. Now I keep a bag of dried leaves next to the bin so I can layer them in every time I add food waste. Has anyone else had luck with a specific ratio or do you eyeball it like I used to?

4 comments

4 Comments

park.miles1mo ago

Maybe it's just me but I never measure anything.

john_fisher1mo ago

Not measuring anything, that's quite a bold move. Is it really that deep though? Seems like a lot of people get wrapped up in precision when sometimes a handful of this and a splash of that works just fine.

leehall1mo ago

But see, measuring is kind of important when you're baking or dealing with yeast. You can wing it with a stew or a stir fry, but bread and pastries need that balance or they just fall flat. Not saying you need a scale for everything, but there's a difference between cooking by feel and just hoping for the best.

shanef341mo ago

park.miles says he never measures anything, and I guess that works fine if you're making scrambled eggs or a pot of beans. But try that with a sourdough starter and see how far "a handful of flour" gets you. I've seen people end up with hockey pucks that could double as doorstops because they thought measuring was optional. It's not about being fancy with a scale, it's about not wasting good ingredients on a science experiment that went wrong. You can cook by the seat of your pants, but baking is more like chemistry with edible results.