Hello everyone, I'd like your help in convincing the people I garden with in this gardening association to improve our composting.
Currently, our biggest annual expense is buying soil and compost to supplement our raised beds.
We have a compost pile where we collect peelings from a restaurant, about 10 kg of green waste per week.
We also add some green waste from the garden, but they're afraid of disease, so they pull up and don't compost the vegetable harvest waste.
As a result, we just have a large pile of compost that smells strongly of sulfur from miles away. No matter how much I turn it, the stench is unbearable.
They leave it for a year, and only then do they mix it with a little brown waste and let it compost for another year without touching it.
Isn't there any way to improve the process to get more nutrients for our poor soil?Thank you in advance!
by Vertdaubet
7 Comments
If the compost smells bad, it’s likely not enough browns, in my experience.
Rake up all those leaves that are lying around and put them in your compost. And don’t just put it in a pile, make a bin or three.
I’d ask your local master gardeners, extension service, college horticulture program, etc for any local resources or to have someone come by and make suggestions to the entire garden club here. They will quickly remedy your compost. Probably needs more browns throughout.
chip drop for free browns in mass
Well. This is tough. I was thinking, “of course they should pull together and compost”, until you reminded me of disease vectors.
I have a similar situation in my home garden with my pear and apple trees. I have sooty blotch on both trees, and the fungus overwinters in the leaf litter. I’m very careful to not let the fallen leaves stay on the ground and I never put those leaves in my compost pile.
So I can understand the concern in a community garden. You could easily have 29 people doing the right thing, and 1 person doing the wrong thing, and everyone’s plot suffers. Honestly, I don’t have a solution for you. I just wanted to offer support for why it is managed as it is.
Tree guys usually dump a trucks of chips for free, great stuff, great as mulch right now, great as compost later. I have seen food waste composting take ugly turns, maybe you want to stop that. ‘Unbearable stench’ not a pleasant garden feature, and neither is a major rat infestation.
I agree with cmoke’s comment. Could you add shredded cardboard to the mix? I’m trying to think of something easy to do that a portion of the people in your garden could get behind and accomplish together. I compost nearly all the cardboard that I receive at home, but I have a large compost setup relative to the amount of cardboard I receive and it’s not really a factor that’s impacted the pile; but it could be because the ratio of cardboard is low. What I’m saying is I’m not an expert. 😀