My dad would tell you let it sit for three years and let nature take it course. but than again he has three different piles going at any one time.

 My boys and I use a long space about three feet by fifteen feet, I keep adding and turning as I move down the row, after about a year I sift through a screen and add to different parts of the garden. I let one end age while working towards the other end.

But mind you the boys and I are always in the compost pile turning it over to get the worms for fishing.

Hey, has anyone checked out redwormcomposting.com, this guy has a great video on YouTube

I hope this isn't a repeat, but I turn my pile almost every day. And I take it's temp. about once a week. I'm just compulsive like that. Also water it once in a while so it's damp and not soggy.

I'm a believer! I never composted until about 6 months ago. I used a very simple wire bin, and added raked leaves, prunings, kitchen scraps. I wasn't really sure how it was progressing, the pile never seemed as hot as I thought it should be BUT.... last weekend I was planting some spectacular lilies that were given to me, and I decided to see what I could add out of the compost pile. I was delighted to find such rich, dark, good smelling crumbly compost, it looked and smelled exactly like it should!

I moved the wire bin to start a new pile, and will keep turning and using the old one while the new one "cooks"

 This is great stuff! If you haven't tried it, you must! It's not that hard, and very rewarding.
 

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Anne, A YardLover from Virginia
Read my Blog

I wish I could get more stuff to put into the pile. Anyone else run out of compost for all their gardens?

If I run low on stuff to put into my compost, I make a run to Starbucks and get coffe grounds, and go to a local Health Food store and get shredded veggies and fruit left over from their smoothies!!

i've heard coffee grounds many times in this forum...i've used them myself... however, watch out for too much all y'all, pH is a factor in composting's final product... i would assume we aren't all using the final product for growing blueberries.

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13013... overthrowing the world one small step at a time.

I drink mass amounts of coffee. coffee and filter go to compost. I was just wondering how does coffee affect the ph in relation to soil in New Hampshire with lots of pines and all. i guess lime is recommended to bring down the acid from all the pine trees. Does coffee grounds send me in the right direction of acidic soil? thanks, Billy  

I think coffee grounds  alone in the soil will make the soil acidic, but if added to compost, it will create  a lot on nutrients.

   

my mistake, i pulled this from another gardening forum:

"Roasted coffee is fairly acidic, but it appears that almost all of the acid is water soluble and is extracted during brewing. Used grounds have essentially neutral pH, although the coffee beverage produced is rather acidic.

The measured pH of used coffee grounds was 6.9, with a significant amount of buffer capacity - adding the coffee to either acidic or basic solutions drove both towards neutral pH. The exact pH of used grounds will depend on the pH and alkalinity of the water used in brewing, but with any potable water, used grounds will be close to neutral pH."

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13013... overthrowing the world one small step at a time.