Captain Compost mentioned this in the Gardening and Landscaping Forum and I was wondering about the explanation. I have a compost pile which is zero animal manure, 1/3 browns and 2/3 green. The green is mostly grass clippings and the brown is mostly dead grass rhizomes and shredded newspaper. Should I be increasing the newspaper shreds? If my greens outweigh my browns, what should I expect to see? Is my didproportionate amount of greens the explanation for the smelly, fly-attracting pile which I have? Hmmmm.

Sasha

Hi Sasha,
You hit the nail right on the head. If you could reverse your proportions, your smells should go away. Those smells contain the fertilizers you are trying to keep in the pile. When the smells waft out from the pile, they are taking away nitrogen usually, and often sulfur.

Whenever a pile smells, something is wrong with it. It is usually too wet but the other reason is too much greens and not enough browns. Proper piles do not smell, ever.

Aha...thank you for the special note about the nitro and sulphur emissions. That helps spur me on to shred more newspaper! I happen to have an abundance of day-olds from my work (Starbucks). Yay! i think I'll go out and tun the pile....

And when your neighbors are raking and bagging their spring or fall leaves, get out there and reap your harvest. Leaves will be better than newspaper because they will have the minerals from deep in the soil right there.