Took me 6 months to get my compost pile right

Kept getting this sour smell and mushy mess in my backyard bin in Austin. Finally figured out I was adding too much green and not enough brown material. Anybody else struggle with balancing compost ratios for way too long?

3 comments

3 Comments

carr.luna21d ago

My first batch in San Antonio smelled like a dead animal for three weeks straight. I finally realized my neighbor's oak tree was dropping leaves that had too much tannin in them. Switched to shredded newspaper and cardboard and it fixed everything.

kim_davis21d ago

The whole compost thing really does tie into this bigger pattern I've noticed about how we learn stuff by messing up first. Nobody tells you that the perfect ratio is more about feel than a strict recipe, you know? I've seen it happen with gardening all the time, but also with stuff like baking bread or even learning to fix a leaky faucet. You gotta go through that stinky, frustrating phase before you figure out what "right" looks like. That's why I always tell people to just start and expect to fail at first. It's like that old saying about how you have to make a mess before you can make a masterpiece.

nora_webb5121d ago

Honestly, my first compost pile was basically a science experiment in how long it takes for food scraps to just sit there and mock you. Took me three months to realize I was basically creating a swamp because I was adding too much water, not too little. Ngl, I learned more from that smelly disaster than from any book or YouTube video.