Have you read the FAQ articles?
What are the facts of your pile? Dimensions, etc.
Spend $15 or $20 for a compost thermometer, and forget the accellerators.

Compost accellerators are not necessary, and won't help if the basics are not already in place.

I have an earth machine which I purchased from my town for about $30.

Yes, I read the FAQ and I googled. That is how I learned that brown can be newspapers. I'm not sure of how much should go in, all I can say is the compost bin is 1/2 full with slimy vegetative matter, and I shredded 4 entire newspapers and mixed them in today.

I don't mean to whine, but I like to be a good neighbor, and where I live the houses are extremely close to one another. Should I just throw the whole mess out? Or, can I spread it in my yard where it will probably dry quicker? (Oh, the flies!)

If it's half full and it's all greens, you'll need a lot more than 4 newspapers.

If you're having trouble getting browns, you can get a big bale of pine shavings in the pet department of most stores like Kmart, Walmart, etc. I think you'll need to add almost as much high carbon material as you've got high nitrogen material to get it working well. If I were you, I'd add a layer of newspaper or shredded pine, then toss a layer from the bottom of the pile on top, then add another layer of paper and/or shredded pine, then get another shovel from the bottom, etc.

I usually try to get by without buying anything to add to the compost, but I have resorted to buying a bale of shredded bedding in the past.

If you work in an office, do they shred any of their paper? If so, that can be used, also.

ooog.

I had no idea.

so, its not beyond help? Even tho it is mostly slime?

You can also freeze the greens until you get some browns. You can also buy a bale of hay or straw. They're about 5 bucks in my neck of the woods.

one problem is that you might also have a anaerobic setting in your pile. you might want to aerate it GOOD. maybe you could tear the pile down and completely rebuild it. personally, I don't feel that stabbing a pile with a fork and turning it a little does much good for the microbes in the pile, they need a good breath of o2.

as for adding carbons, look for a list on the internet of compostable carbons, if you DO rebuild your pile, do it in layers. do 4 to 6 inches of carbons then 2 to 4 inches of greens, then repeat. that should get your compost cooking and your neighbors to shut up lol.

even if my compost stinks, my neighbor wouldn't (couldn't) say anything, there is 125 dogs in her dog shelter between my house and hers.

Cardboard is also a good brown, and should be easy to come by. I got hay at Lowes for $4.88 a bale. My daughter helped me spread it and went on and on about how good it smelled (like a pony). Surely, that earthy aroma of fresh hay won't be offensive to the neighbors, and the carbon source will "sweeten" your CP too.

It's not beyond help. It's slimy because it's wet and has too much nitrogen for the amount of carbon. Adding high carbon matter (which is also dry) will help with both of those issues.

Kisses to you all! And thank you.

Should I, at this point, not add any more greens for the rest of the season? how do I know when to start up again, or if I should?

Simply aerating a compost pile that is in anaerobic digestion will not help much if the reason that compost pile is anaerobic in the first place is not corrected. A slimy, smelly, compost pile with flies hovering over it generally indicates a compost pile that is too wet, and a too wet pile will always be anaerobic because the excess water drives out the air the aerobic bacterial need to work. A general rule of thumb that can be used when adding kitchen waste (think high moisture levels) to a compost bin is that you need about 3 times as much dry vegetative waste to add at that time.
This composting tutorial may be of some help.

Here is a link that might be useful: Online Composting Center

I've seen hay mentioned several times. I consider it to be a green, usually very high in protien, and can add to the stink. Straw is more of a brown. I got several(20+) bales of hay last year for free. They did great as a ground cover mulch on the lawn over winter and I did mow several of them and put in the compost. They certainly acted like a green in my pile.

Donna, Don't be afraid to call the folks at the "town" yourself if you're having trouble.
They sold you the earth machine at a deep discount for a good reason and they'll want you to be successful. The more folks they can get composting, the longer the existing landfill last.
Give them a call, and you may find that they have a good source browns available for you for nothing.

Your restaurant friend may be able to supply you with browns in the form of office paper, egg flats & cardboard boxes.
Your town may have a mountain of leaves somewhere. Find out where last fall's leaves were dumped.

I dumped some sour bags of grass clippings last year to start a lasagna bed and I was floored by the stench, and how far it carried. I hadn't realized how sour they were until I'd slashed the bags wide open. I spread it, and watered it down thinking "There. That'll wash some of the smell down."

Whah, whah, whah. The extra water amped up the smell so much, I'm surprised nearby trees didn't start dropping leaves. I, too, was in a panic, pretty much hopping from one foot to the other. My neighbors deck and grill were only about twenty feet away. My kids in the pool twenty five feet away became still, and yelled "Mom, something's wrong! Something SMELLS!!! " They're boys, and they were really giving each other the evil eye.

I wound up layering newsprint on top of the whole mess, as I recall, three or four layers, and maybe some cardboard too, I just can't remember. I've blocked it out.

I give tomatoes to all my neighbors, hoping to bank up some good will. I know the next mess is just around the corner!

Last time I faced this problem (due to adding grass clippings from the landscapers in my T/H development) I went out and collected dead leaves from the traffic island near my house. There was plenty of material available and it solved the problem pronto. Just rebuild your pile, aim for a full bin if it's half full now and stinky/wet/slimy.

DON'T stop composting, you will get the hang of it, it's not rocket science.

You might as well just kill me now, 'cause he's still b*tching. I'm not working fast enough for him.

I HATE being a bad neighbor.

And, I DID tell the town, only to be ingored. They took their $40 and said "bye!" However, they DID give me a brochure. What I learned about composting was from GW and the internet.

PS - forgive me if this post comes up more than once. I SWEAR I typed it 3 times today....

Carbons carbons and more carbons!!!

I remember when I first started composting and thought all you had to do was dump grass clippings into one pile and wait for it to turn into black soil. WRONG! First it was the smell of rotten bananas, then rotten eggs, then the most putrid sewage you can think of (especially after a rain!).

After that, I gathered as much twigs as I could from my house and made an enormous pile, turned it all into dust with my lawn mower (I've stopped doing that since it destroys my blade and I use leaves now), and I mixed it into my pile. The temperatures soared and was searing hot for several weeks!

The moral of the story though is that before you agree to have an unlimited supply of greens, it's always better to have an unlimited supply of browns or carbons beforehand. Decomposing carbons smell like sweet forest floor compare to the toilet smell of decomposing greens

If I was anywhere near you, I'd bring you over a couple of bags of nicely shredded leaves/wheat straw and fix this issue for you. I've come to the rescue of a few people who got into similar predicaments so you are not alone with this problem.

As I'm not, I would then recommend a quick trip to wally's world and pick up a couple of bags of wood shavings they use for pet gerbils. This stuff is pretty cheap but if you know someone who does woodworking or has a pet gerbil you might be able to source it there as well.

Take one bag, mix it in as best you can and then take the second bag and layer it on top. The stuff mixed in will allow for better aeration and the stuff on top will act as a filter of sorts.

Lloyd

Like everybody else said add some straw and lots of it at least as much as your pile currently is

Also means you have mostly kitchen scraps you might want to check out vermicomposting you need to keep an eye on how much you feed but don't need any browns

Here is a link that might be useful: vermicomposting

What is the difference between straw and hay?

Hay comes from grass, clover, alfalfa, etc and is cut while the plant is green, then dried so it can be used to feed animals. It's fairly high in protein (so a low C:N ratio, making it a "green" in composting).

Straw comes from grains like oats, wheat, barley, rye, etc. It's cut after the grain is harvested. It's low in protein (so it has a higher C:N ratio, making it a brown).

I don't buy anything for compost, except straw, usually just one bale per year. After I run out of fall leaves, the straw becomes my primary "brown". One bale goes a long way.

Donna you might be surprised at the amount of brown that you really need in compost. Don't be stingy with "browns". You really need 2 to 3 times as much carbon "brown" as you do "greens". Mix it well by rebuilding the whole thing, adding straw as you go. Also cover the top with a think layer of straw and it will absorb a lot of odor. A bale of straw will solve your problem. I pay $7 locally.

This fall, be sure to hoard leaves.

Karen

I am surprised. Had no idea. This is my first year, and I will learn from my mistakes (and my neighbors won't let me forget).

Get a shredder. Shred every piece of junk mail and office paper you have. Shred cereal, cookie, cracker boxes. See if the neighbors have any shredded paper they may let you have.

If you are growing vegetables or flowers, offer them to the neighbors to show them what you have and can achieve from your compost... Good luck!

LOL, Like petalpalsy said give them tomatoes, they can't gripe with there mouth full of nice jucy home grown tomatoes. LOL especially if they have hopes of getting more.

Hola Donna,

Since you have access to so much high Nitrogen material you might try making Bokashi. Bokashi is fermented organic matter.

I was scrambling to get a lot of loose ends tied up before I left for work away from home for a month earlier this year. One of those ends was a pile of red apple ice plant that I ran through a shredder, mixed with freshly chipped Italian Cypress, and then closed in a 20 gallon Rubber Maid barrel after spraying with Effective Microorganisms (EM-1). When I opened the container over a month later it had a fermented scent, not the objectionable odor of standard anaerobic decomposition.

I haven't used it yet since I am playing catch-up from the time that I was absent, but from what I have read bokashi is every bit as good as finished compost, maybe better.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bokashi_composting

http://emrojapan.com/

http://shopping.netsuite.com/s.nl/c.471963/it.A/id.225/.f?sc=1&category=-101

Terran

Here is a link that might be useful: EM Research Organization

Thank you, but that is way beyond me. I'm a newbie to composting.

Also, I don't have an outside shredder, just an old, tired paper shredder. I use that, but it takes me forever.

It has been doing nothing but raining here and of course that makes everything worse.

This weekend, rain or shine, I will have to work on it again.

Thanks everyone.

I forgot to relay what may be the most important bit of information for your situation. EM eliminates odors.

Long story cut short.

Last summer I finally replaced our septic tank. First of all it wasn't installed correctly. Once the first leach trench was saturated, the effluent ran back to the tank, and then the tank cracked. The tank was near the surface and odoriferous effluent puddled at the surface.

Needless to say, I wasn't looking forward to the work. Fortunately, I found out about EM. A dilute solution of EM was sprinkled in the cesspool around the tank and in a day or so the odor was gone.

Terran

Here is a link that might be useful: EM1® Multi-use Size

That's what I mean, an office paper shredder. If you work in an office outside of the home, see if your office has any shredded paper. Also paper towels, tear those up and add them too. Good luck.

Other small sources of browns: Cardboard circles from under frozen pizzas, paper egg cartons, brown paper bags. Both my paper egg cartons and my brown paper bags get filled with 'greens' then tossed in the composter. I don't bother to shred, but I occasionally rip the pizza circles up a bit, and I go and rip things up when I open my tumbler to check on its progress. (If its ...ummm.. wet... I use two small garden rakes, rather than my hands to rip.)But, I don't make compost quickly at all, in fact, I'm downright lazy about it!

But, for the fix for the smell problem right now, I agree with getting a bale of straw (check garden centers or feed stores) or if you can't find that, the hamster bedding. will fix it, but it takes longer to break down that the straw. And you could try topping the rebuilt pile with some old potting soil, if you have any, to try to contain the smell until the straw balances the greens out. (It might take a day or two for the smell to go away as the pile balances out.)

Good luck

Hi Donna, When I first started to compost a few years ago I would panick each time bin would begin to stink. Besides newspapers, t.p. roll centers, cardboard and leaves, I found a source for sawdust. It is especially useful in the summer when there are tons of greens but leaves are scarce. There is a millwork company nearby that is happy to give me several garbage bags full of sawdust whenever I stop by. (I only felt silly the first time I asked!)

The largest component of browns in my pile is shredded junk mail. I have an endless supply. The mail man brings me more each day.