It is odd, and also gross! Bleach should take away the smell from the garden tools, but I wish showers of bleach where a thing, haha.

Are you sure a critter didn’t die in it? Baby bunny, frog, etc? Seems odd otherwise for sure.

^^my first thought too ack!

It was definitely rot. It was slimy inside the rootball!

That's so weird, why would a herbaceous thing smell so bad? Rotting green waste smells but not disgustingly so.

I agree teuth. I compost faithfully. If the process smelled remotely like that, I certainly wouldn’t.

I don’t know if this would be “green waste”, but I cleaned up a pile of bird food under the feeder that was wet. It smelled horrible!

I’ve had a few bearded iris turn to mush in the rain and the smell on those!!!! Ugh. They turn to mush and just plain stink. Anyone who has ever found a rotten potato in with the others will know the smell.

And fields of rotting cabbage stink like nothing you ever imagined.

I might plant in a pot in that spot for this year. I would be worried that it has the potential to be something contagious, though I don’t know. Regardless, sounds disgusting!

I remember a few years ago, being in and around my patio garden space and going sniff, sniff....something was just "off". I thought I was being over sensitive, since it is outdoors and all...but sniff, sniff...even had dinner outside with some friends and would get these wafts of uinpleasantness, but just dismissed it...a week or so later, I was cleaning up and found a mouse had found it's way into a container where I had some grass seed, became trapped, drowned/suffocated, and was wet rotting! GROSS!