Green Versus Brown Compost Materials
Composting in your garden is very easy to do, and adds free fertilizer and conditioner to your garden based on your kitchen and garden wastes. You can throw any acceptable materials to your compost pile. However, to achieve quick and optimal compost, it should be well balanced with green and brown waste materials.
Why? Think of compost as a diet for your soil microorganisms which will do the actual work of turning your waste into dark, rich compost. Just like anybody or anything else, a proper diet is essential for growth and health. Humans can’t live on only french fries (though that would be great!) — in the same vein, composting microbes can’t only live on grass clippings. They need both green and brown ingredients.
The richer and more varied the compost diet, the healthier the environment for your microbes to thrive in.
The Proper Ratio of Browns and Greens - Clearing Up the Confusion
A number thrown around is 25 to 30 parts brown to 1 part green. This doesn’t mean throwing in a massive amount of browns and only a tiny but of green - instead, it refers to carbon versus nitrogen, not the organic matter you throw in the compost. Everything is made up of carbon, greens and browns. Green just happens to have more nitrogen in it because — well, the green color partly gives it away. Seriously, though, all living things are a mixture of carbon and nitrogen, and after death, the nitrogen is released, turning green grass and leaves brown. Coffee grounds and manure are good examples of nitrogen-rich but non-green products.
Equal amounts brown and green will achieve the proper ratio of 30:1. Well, close enough. Let’s not make things overly complicated, except to add a bit more brown material than green.
Brown Materials
Brown is the energy the compost microbes need to thrive. Without it, your pile of green kitchen scraps will become smelly and slimy. This is because your greens will decompose too quickly through the bacteria already in the materials, rapidly fermenting nitrogen into the rotten egg smell of ammonia.
You want enough brown materials for the good bacteria and microbes to have enough energy to multiply and slow down the release of nitrogen. The layering effect of compost is a natural way to do this.
If your compost has a rotten rather than rich, earthy smell, add some more brown materials to the mix. Stir it as well, as a lack of oxygen also contributes to unpleasant smells.
Examples of brown materials include:
- dry leaves, grass and the woody stalks of plants such as sunflowers and corn
- paper and wood products, such as sawdust, chopped up twigs and shredded newspaper
- dryer lint
- wood ash (not too much)
Green Materials
Nitrogen is the protein the munching microbes need to thrive. Too little nitrogen, and your pile will decay into compost a lot more slowly, though it eventually will. The microbes will be fewer and weaker, so it could take a year or two in a mostly brown compost pile to turn into rich compost. A well balanced compost will be hot, due to all those microscopic bodies busily multiplying and feasting for you!
Examples of green materials include:
- Kitchen scraps, such as vegetables, melon rinds, eggshells, coffee grinds with the filter, tea bags and fruit
- fresh green leaves and grass clippings
- weeds that haven’t seeded (seeds will likely survive the composting process)
- manure from vegetarian animals - cow, sheep, chicken, rabbit
- hair - scatter the hair in the bin, not in clumps
Add some water, turn your compost every couple days, and viola, after a few weeks or months you will have a great source of soil conditioner and organic fertilizer for your garden and vegetable plants!
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