My Compost Smells

It's not just your piles that stink.

The time it takes depends on the mix of ingredients in it, the temperature, how often you turn it and if you have the moisture right. From 6 weeks to a year. If it has been snowing those microorganisms are not working much at all. They all smell somewhat but if it is a really revolting sour smell it means that it has gone anaerobic, that is not enough air and/or too wet.

David

...if it smells like rotting eggs or sulphur then you can solve that immediate problem by turning it several times and mixing in some dry material like leaves or shredded paper. The smell should lessen.

rob

Thanks Rob, I'll try to do that, but I was wondering if there was like a product that you can put on the stack to cover the smell... ______________________________________ It's called 'sweat'. Get a fork, turn the compost until you are lathered in sweat and then you'll have no further problems with smelly compost.

You don't need to cover the smell with yet another. See the previous posts; a healthy compost heap has very little odor, and certainly not an unpleasant one.

Gary Woods AKA K2AHC- PGP key on request, or at home.earthlink.net/~garygarlic Zone 5/6 in upstate New York, 1420' elevation. NY WO G

Many folks are unaware of the fact of life that death and decay aka rot enable growth and rebirth. A sterile world is devoid of life.

Bill

ROFL!

Everyone's joking right now but let me inject a serious note.

THere are no useful shortcuts.

You want compost, you are going to have to learn about it and put the work in.

ingredient. Unless or until he learns to add that, he won't have compost - he'll simply have rotted vegetation. I see no problems with the rotted vegetation approach either, but if he wants to go that way, he will need to understand that he doesn't pile it, he spreads it and them has to a potential weed problem unless he also learns how to use the rotted vegetation.

There are many kinds of plastic sheet etc but you may be making it worse by excluding the air.

David

Ommmmmmmmmmmmmmm

David

Then their is the issue of heat to help break down.

Bill

Tao Follows The Earth 2:36 David Darling The Tao Of Cello New Age

That's not strictly true. What the "sweat" (turning) adds is oxygen, but there are other ways of providing that, easiest of which is to alternate the layers of vege scraps with layers of straw that trap air in the pile. The Humanure Handbook actually recommends that over turning, as turning tends to break the mycelia of all the fungi in the pile.

I'm not saying that turning is bad (it's good!), just that it isn't the only answer.

It IS strictly true as it applies to him. He has smelly 'compost' right now (or says he does). The only way to cure his current 'compost' problem is to turn it. Any future compost pile is not what he asked about.

Well, as serious as you may have been, it looked like you were using humour.

I wondered why you didn't indicate that after sweating and digging through anaerobic compost that one tends to smell a little ...rotten.

I don't know why I keep thinking this newsgroup should be fertile ground for humour.

Well, he could add leaves or straw on the top which would contain the smell.

Indeed, we don't want him to learn from his mistakes, we only want him to sweat! :)

Well he could add lime. But that would only open up a can of worms. Which kind? Oh this composting thing is so daffodil .

Trying to seal it up would make the pile more anaerobic.

Eventually it all breaks down and the smell goes away but depending on the size of the bin/pile, it can take awhile.

I can't give accurate facts and figures but I've instigated a couple of compost heap meltdowns with too many grass clippings and I think it took about two weeks for the stench to drop to barely noticeable.

At the time the neighbours were all on vacation or the houses were vacant and up for sale, my wife was away and the compost bins are far away from the house so I let it go and then incorporated the result in the next compost heap.