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Soil, Compost & Mulch

SOS on green/brown materials

blessedmotheroffour

16 years ago

I started putting together a bed a bit ago. Other than newspapers at the bottom, then leaves; I don't remember what order I put the rest of the stuff. I think that I tried to put leaves, newspaper, food scraps layer on layer. A month ago,I did start putting a thick layer of coffee grounds from my local Starbucks then grass clippings and leaves and newspapers along with food scraps. Right now the top three layers are coffee grounds, food scraps, then leaves. I hope I am making a simple thing hard, rather than doing this wrong but does this sound like the correct layer of materials to using? Getting the brown/green catagory is hard for me to keep straight. Is coffee ground in the green catagory? How about newspaper and then oak and pine leaves? Are they green or brown? Food scraps- green or brown? I promise to save all replies to my SOS so when I get dizzy agian I can look up the info and not ask silly questions over and over! LOL Christal

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Comments (4)

Karchita
16 years ago
You'll find what you are looking for in the FAQs.

After you layer the materials, you stir it all together, so the order doesn't matter. The proportion, however, does matter.

Happy Composting!

Here is a link that might be useful: A Brief Intro to Composting
blessedmotheroffour
Original Author
16 years ago
I am sorry I forgott to include the most important fact about what I am trying to do. I was putting together a
lasagna bed and you don't stir it up at all, you just layer it! I need to find the Q&A spot to read the info and will go to the link you provided. Many thanks. Cj
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Belgianpup
16 years ago
It sounds like you're doing fine, to me. Just don't go crazy making perfect layers, because the worms and bugs and stuff will be dragging the contents around and stirring it up anyway.

Some of those lines between greens and browns get kind of fuzzy, don't they? Sometimes it might be easier to think of the greens as Wets and the browns as Drys. I'm not talking about adding water, but mainly how you think of them.

For instance, Greens/Wets: fresh grass clippings, green freshly-pulled weeds, food scraps, coffee grounds, fresh (green or moist) leaves.

Browns/Drys: newspaper, shredded paper, dry leaves, straw, hay, dry weeds, dry grass clippings.

And don't forget to add a little soil if you can. The worms like to have some grit to eat, like chickens.

Sue
Kimmsr
16 years ago
What you do not want to do when building up a Lasagna bed is get the proportions the same as you would in a compost pile since that bed would then heat up like a compost pile would and that heat generated would kill you plants. Do not be concerneed about proportions, except to not get that compost pile, or order of the material.

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