If you chop up your woody shrub trimmings into small pieces they will break down faster.
If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.”—Marcus Tullius Cicero East facing, top of a hill clay-loam, cultivated for centuries (7 years by me). Birmingham
Mass quantity is my method I use pallet bins with all the sides filled with 100mm insulation this creates a chimney effect to the heat. Bins are filled in 1 go (I get tree surgeon waste) and turned weekly, watered when needed as with lots of heat they dry out fast. I feed all the grass clippings from 2 large gardens into bins throughout the year but it must be well mixed in. I'm a bit of a mad nut with the compost and can be found messing about with it at all hours (insomnia is a terrific boon to composting)
Bad smells are almost certainly due to too much greens, add more browns so leaves, paper, cardboard and twiggy stuff then turn it more often. With the right mix everything will compost in time as it's only the natural process of decay speeded up
As Posy says, it runs from science to magic. Down the years I've done textbook mixes that heat up like a furnace and compost in weeks, to the other extreme of just dumping whatever the garden produced as waste in layers and letting the worms and bugs deal with it. Both produced compost.
I can honestly say, I've never stopped learning new things about composting!
@Posy not impressive really it's rather sad, what normal person checks the temperature of compost never mind that what normal goes begging a thermometer probe so he can check it 🤣🤣🤣 composting and gardening are clearly not for the same of mind 🤣🤣🤣
@Posy not impressive really it's rather sad, what normal person checks the temperature of compost never mind that what normal goes begging a thermometer probe so he can check it 🤣🤣🤣 composting and gardening are clearly not for the same of mind 🤣🤣🤣
I’m clearly not normal... had the temp probe in compost bin today.
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East facing, top of a hill clay-loam, cultivated for centuries (7 years by me). Birmingham
I can honestly say, I've never stopped learning new things about composting!
filled friday afternoon, and at 63’c by 9am today
As for Browns, my wife has magazines every week.
Can they be shredded along with Newspapers.