Adventures in composting

I share two urban garden plots with my 87 year old neighbor. He has an old Mantis compost tumbler (discontinued post-covid), while I have a newer (and smaller)  dual chamber polycarbonate drum from Home Depot. I probably put too many grass clipping’s in my neighbor’s drum, because it has been smelling sour for a while, and has been way too damp. Mine has been similar, but to a lesser extent. I’ve been adding tried leaves to both, to limited effect. While I was running errands today, I noticed that somebody had abandoned two boxes of pasta. One family sized box of fettuccini, and one of angel hair pasta. The boxes had ruptured, so four pounds of pasta was just sitting exposed to the elements in the gutter. It was probably no longer fit for human consumption, but is it compostable? This afternoon, I decided to find out.  I collected the pasta, and added three cups of broken up pasta to each drum  (a cup being a bundle between my index finger and thumb) and gave them a spin. I figure, since pasta is dehydrated semolina, maybe it will absorb the excess moisture in the compost, and start to rot on it's own. Has anybody else experimented with composting dried pasta?

I have tossed all sorts of plant based matter onto my compost piles .. including old dried pasta.   I have found that time and the weather will deal with anything I try to compost.

Pasta is a pretty well balanced input for compost, leaning on the 'green' side just a touch. It should compost down readily but if you are still having issues with sourness you will want to consider a carbon rich additive such as leaves like you have been doing.

You never know how something will work until you try, let us know how your compost keeps developing!

Doing composting is the best way to learn how to do it.

At tip I will suggest is using a formula.

Brown matter is carbon rich and green mater is nitrogen rich.

An easy formula is 2 parts brown (leaves, twigs) and 1 part green (grass).

A couple of threads of interest:

https://permies.com/t/186168/composting/green-brown

https://permies.com/t/47495/composting/browns-greens-manures-geoff-lawton