The Urban Worm Company's Compost Calculator creates a recipe to find the perfect carbon-to-nitrogen ratio for compost and vermicomposting.
urbanwormcompany.com
Azi,
Here is a link to a carbon:nitrogen calculator. The dropdowns have your greens and browns. You access the dropdowns by clicking on the ingredient box.
Add the ingredients to the list and manually enter their number from the dropdown lists. Ex. coco is 90:1 so 90 is entered in the valueunit field.
You can add in an entire shopping list and if your ingredient isn't on the list google its C:N ratio and add that number in. Then balance it with final ingredients.
I mix my coco 50/50 with used soil to add to my worm farm, so by doing that it cuts its value to 45, and adding equal parts veggie scraps I get a 30:1 ratio of C:N.
The actual coco is still 90:1 I just use half the amount, and 90 is a good number for a steady slow burning compost carbon. Cutting it in half with dirt doesn't speed it up but when its finished you have cut it in half by volume with the dirt and it comes out balanced when finished.
Leaves are a fair bit trickier as no 2 types of leaves have the same carbon value, but leaves have a bunch of once or twice already digested minerals in them so they are worth the effort.
You could skip the used soil and just double the greens too, but I want the minerals in my mix to get eaten repeatedly, and I don't get that from leaves as I don't use them indoors.
I based my decisions on a starting point of 50% used soil in my carbon mix, so all my carbon values are half of what stated by volume.
Hopefully this will help you moving forward. Balancing carbon is an essential thing to have dialed in, and by dialed in I mean in the ball park.
If you get close to 30:1, then when its "finished" its actually finished, and not just stalled and waiting for fresh nitrogen or carbon to show up to refire the composting process.
The ratios in both the greens and browns list are very educational.
Try thinking of browns and greens as carbs and proteins, as they actually are carbs and proteins. Then just build a balanced diet that ends up close to 30:1.
You quickly see in the list that coffee grounds are almost perfect by themselves, but at a density that low they won't last thru an entire grow.
They decompose quickly which is why they get put in compost piles. We often refer to coffee grounds as high in nitrogen, but what they really are is lower in carbon, making them nitrogen heavy on the ratio.
You may also think "Bark at 500:1 is a mega-carbon. I could just use a bit of bark instead of a lot of coco". Thats true but at 500:1 Bark is dense and won't come close to releasing its carbon in a manner condusive to composting. It takes years not weeks or months.
This is all about the composting half of carbon, not the feeding the microbes half.
When it comes to feeding the microbes, carbon is carbon but at too high a density the microbe/fungii can't eat it quick enough to multiply like crazy, and too undense, like coffee grounds and it becomes volatile and COULD actually start to compost with atmospheric nitrogen as light carbon doesn't require a lot of protein to ignite.
Carbon is the hardest part to wrap your brain around, but organics loosely translates into "of carbon base" so carbon is the big player.
Carbons biggest problem is it should be C-N-P-K but its not directly a plant food, its a microbe food, so no one talks about it.The Man can't market leaves in a manner that will make you buy it. Plants literally get their carbon from thin air.
If you apply this to your diet, two thirds carbs, one third proteins by volume on your plate YOUR brix levels will rise and weight will fall.
Its a balanced meal.
Then you just find carbons and proteins that supply good without the bad (pick your poison) and YOUR brix will go over the human equivalent of 13.
Its almost like plants are a balanced diet.
Weird hey?
