Hi,

Yes, greens provide nitrogen. But don't get confused with the color. Used coffee grounds are also considered a "green" as is fresh manure and we all know what color that is.

Dried up stuff like dried leaves are a "brown".

There are those on here that have their compost piles down to a rare art form. Then there are others like me who just let it happen. The saying "compost happens" is for the most part true.

I don't worry too much over ratios. I go heavier on the browns though. After that I throw in what I want when I want and when I can "green"wise. I turn the pile when the garden gods move me to do so. I never, ever water my pile. I'm on a well and can't justify the use of water like that. I'm sure there are people that will disagree with me on my methods but regardless, my final end result is still compost.

Free sources of material for the compost pile are bagged leaves sitting on the curb every fall. If you have a local coffee shop around you could hit them up for their spent grounds. Kitchen veggie scraps along with egg shells are a regular addition to my pile. Hopefully others will give you more ideas but the ones I've given are pretty much the only ones I use.

I used to add a shovel full of soil to new piles. I think the idea is that you are introducing bacteria and other critters. I no longer do this and I still end up with compost in the end.

Bottom line, make it as easy or intricate as you want. As long as the pile doesn't stink all is well;-)

ad more green but if the pile doesn't get hot you may just be spreading weed seeds

http://www.compostinfo.com/cn/Default.htm
Virtual composter site may provide some help

Here's my approach:

I add some browns whenever I add greens. I add water when it starts to get dry. If it's not heating up, I either add more greens, mix it, or add water. If it stinks, I add more browns or mix it. Since I'm in the desert, I don't need to worry about it getting too wet, and I'm also not sure what to do if it does, but I think you add more browns since they tend to be dry.

Once it heats up and stays hot for a while, then cools down, I sift it if it's going on the lawn or just add it to the garden or around trees. If I'm not adding to the garden or around trees, anything that doesn't pass through 1/4 in hardware cloth goes back into the compost for the next batch.

I'm still new at this but I've read that you can use your junk mail or cardboard that has been shredded and soaked in water as a Brown or Carbon. Bag up your leaves and trash clippings for later use as a brown.

1) Mostly, "greens" are most often refered to as Nitrogen sources while "browns" are most often refered to as Carbon sources. Dried "stuff" could be either depending on what it once was and how it was handled.
2)Adding soil once was thought to be necessary because the soil, a good, healthy soil at that, had the bacteria that would digest the material put inot the compost pile. But now we know that all of that material has present on it the bacteria that will digest it and soil is not needed because the bacteria in the soil are different than the bacteria that will digest vegetative waste.
3)While it is important to be kind of, almost, nearly, somewhat close to 30:1 it is not terribly important to check the C:N ratio of every item you compost. Just be nearly close to the proper ratio, easy to do really, and things happen.
4) Shredded paper is a good high Carbon source, but many "weeds" are very close to the 30:1 C:N ratio you want anyway. More than anything else with that moist, green material you need something dry to counteract the moisture.
This link has a list of material and the C:N ratio they normally have.

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

Hi Egg,

One source for carbon/browns that you could use would be shredded newspaper. I have done this by hand since I don't have a shredder. I don't do this often because we like to recycle the paper but it helps in a pinch.

Another source (and I use this all the time) is the phone book. I especially like to use it in my cheapie kitchen bucket that I use for scraps. Shread some in the bottom and it helps soak up the "juice". I ALWAYS seem to have too many phone books.

Old wood mulch (if you have it) is another source of carbon. This takes a little longer to break down. What I did last year was bag up my shredded leaves and store them for use this year. I even went to a relatives house and bagged up theirs. This year I plan to bag more because I ran out. 'grin'.

Val

kimmsr, would you clarify a few things, please? and thanks for the links.

1) my compost always happens, yes. i do it pretty much the way shellva described hers above. but it doesn't get hot, and i'd like to know why. what's the advantage of a hot pile? does it turn into compost faster? (this would enable me to make more each year.) and if you need the heat to kill pathogens, or for some other reason, then why do people say it doesn't matter if your pile is hot or not, that it'll be good no matter how you make it?

2) this is how i interpreted the 30: 1 ratio situation: in the past i've always put in a 3 to 4" layer of whole weeds and about the same of straw. recently i began to think that this was why my compost wasn't heating up and that, instead, i ought to be using 30 inches of straw to 1 inch weeds. but this doesn't seem to be right either, from what you're saying. if "weeds" already have about a 30:1 ratio of C:N (i thought they were all N!), how do you judge how much of what to put in? also, could the large size of my weeds and kitchen scraps (i don't chop anything up) be keeping my compost from heating up?

3) my straw pile is actually wet from being rained on. so putting wet straw in is not counteracting the moisture in the fresh greens. should i be keeping it dry?

4) if weeds are mostly the right ratio to begin with, is it important to add carbonaceous matter at all?

5) what do you use for carbon sources, when you're trying to produce a lot of compost?

thank you!

For myself, shredding is the key to hot, steaming compost.
I have friends who are involved in houserabbit rescue, I get bags and bags of hay mixed with bunny poo and urine soaked newspaper. Before I shredded, it was hard to get any heating, at least in smallish piles.

Now that I shred, I regularly get 160 degrees and compost in weeks. What a difference!

Now shredders aren't cheap, though I am convinced you should buy the right tool for the job, I have never been sorry for this! That said, you can run a lawnmower over the material and get a pretty good shred, takes some technique but is a useable method.

Gary

To get 30:1 you need to weigh items, know the N and C content, add them up...

Do what bpgreen suggests and you won't go wrong.

really, you weigh items?! at first, or always? shredding is a good idea, i'll start that. i noticed today that my compost is pretty damp, maybe too much. not sure. it's in the shade, and the straw i use got rained on and is wet... i noticed something else interesting today. i emptied a black plastic bag full of weeds i picked last week. the were sitting there in the bag all week, and when i emptied them, they were warm. so maybe i should add more greens to my pile.

I think Pablo's point is that if you want to get the 30:1 ratio exactly, you need to know what the ratio of everything is that you put in, weigh what you're putting in and do the math to figure out how much of each thing you need to get the 30:1 exactly right.

Or you can guess to start and add more greens if it isn't heating up or more browns if it stinks.

I'm making compost now with grass clippings from the neighborhood (people set them out on the curb in 30 gallon paper bags) and leaf mulch from last fall that I rake up from my garden. The clippings are generally hot when I add them to the new pile.

I am using roughly 50-50 mix, in layers. The green and brown layers are maybe 6 inches thick, I wet the leaf mulch as it is parched due to the dry weather (it takes a lot of water to get them wet). When I finish a bag of clippings (makes two to three green layers) I shred the bag by hand to start the next brown layer. 1st and last layer are leaf mulch.

The new pile is hot after 24 hours. Turn after three days, add water as needed. If it gets too wet and/or smelly, add more leaf mulch while turning. I put food scraps in the hottest pile (I have four going now, one is finished and one I started today), make a hole and put them in the hot center, they will be gone by the time you next turn the pile.

One other problem could be the size of the pile. I find you need about a cubic yard for a good hot pile.

thanks, everybody. i read years ago that leaves decompose best by themselves because they did so mainly with the help of fungus. so i've never used them in my compost. i'm going to try it now. our compost never smells bad, so i guess i can add more greens than i usually do. maybe this will heat things up.

If you compost leaves all by themselves, it will be a fungal process, and the result will technically be leaf mold rather than compost. Still good stuff, but technically a little different from compost. But you can definitely add them to the compost.

egganddart49
1) heat, in your compost pile indicates that the various thermophilic bacteria are at work converting the material you put in into finished compost. This is not totally necessary because the same material in the forest will get digested, eventually, and will feed the plants growing there. For some people that heat is absolutely essential and they do not have a "real compost" if it does not. That heat is a result of bacterial activity and usually means your compost is getting digested faster. Digestion still happens in a cold pile but it takes longer.
2) the 30:1 and the 3 parts to 1 part do not necesarily mean the same thing. There are lists of material that give the ratio of Carbon to Nitrogen, and each material will have a ratio, and for some really precise composters knowing that is necessary. For most of us simply knowing that, generally, green material is higher in N and brown material is higher in C is enough and that is where the 3 parts of brown material to 1 part of green material (mostly) will get us about where we need to be in reference to the 30:1. The science is precise, but the art of composting does not necessarily have to be.
3) The material in the compost pile only needs to be slightly damp and the usual description is that of a well wrung out sponge. A sponge that feels almost dry. Too much moisture replaces the air that the bacteria that digest your material also needs so the more water the less air. These need to be pretty well in balance, about like the 30:1 ratio, and you will know when both are in balance when the pile heats up. If it does not you did not do something right, which is not always a problem either.
4) Young "weeds" are supposed to have a C:N ratio of 30:1 but I'd suspect that more mature "weeds" (and I'm not sure which is what) would be closer to grass at 19:1, so I always add something high carbon to what "weeds" I may put in. Mostly any "weeds" I do have get mulch mowed back into the soil.
5) leaves. In the fall, and often in the spring, I haul bags of those leaves others put out to have hauled away and keep them around until I need them. Of course my nearest neighbor is 200 feet away and there is a pretty good screen between us and we get along really well and no body else comes around looking to see what "junk" I have stored. When he was lots younger the township Supervisor hunted out back (my property) so he was unlikely to report me but he was a gardener too and I taught him to compost. The current administration is not pro active but rather reactive and that is good.

The N and C levels on those charts are based on mass. If you want to build a 30:1 pile by looking at charts and calculating- then you need to weigh stuff. You also need to dry most things, as they often dehydrate them before analysis.

After all that- the levels may vary significantly from what's on the chart based on age, time of the season, how it was fertilized when growing, and a host of other variables.

Y'all are making this sound really complicated and you can be technical with compost if you want to be, but I think bpgreen said it best

"you can guess to start and add more greens if it isn't heating up or more browns if it stinks"

And I add to that to keep it moist but not wet and things will be fine.