When you are composting, whether it's hot composting, passive, bokashi, whatever, there

are ingredients that you need to add, and oftentimes in a specific ratio or proportion,

it can get a little confusing. You have the carbon to nitrogen ratio, 30 to 1, see the

end, all these sort of formulas and equations. We've talked about it before, but you know,

I think it's great to have a different perspective on. So Alissa Braski is back on. She's

creating a compost network at a company called Food to Soil here in San Diego. Alissa, what

do you see as, you know, the core components that go into a compost pile?

That's a great question, Kevin. So the key components are nitrogen or your greens,

carbon or your browns, water and oxygen. People frequently know about greens and browns,

but that's food waste and molds or straw, and they leave out the water and the oxygen, which

are both really important. So adding moisture to your pile and turning your pile at the oxygen,

these are the four things that can make a successful compost pile.

I would agree with you on that, and do you have any rules of thumb for yourself on the ratios of

which to mix those in? I know there's like, you know, sort of the scientifically established ones,

but I'm curious if you have any rules of thumb. Yeah, so something that really frustrated me when

I was reading all about compost is the ratios and the different numbers that were going into the

carbon to nitrogen ratio, and it felt like everybody had a different opinion or it was vague about

volume versus weight, and what we do with food to soil works for us. Its consistent is a 50-50

volume ratio, and so we add the same amount of mulch. Mulch is our brown that we use because it's

readily available in San Diego to food waste, and so we just layer the same volume of food waste

to mulch, and that really helps out. Of course, you can change the ratio when you're playing around

with it, but there's so many different factors that are happening in your compost pile, it's nice

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