Even with our moisture here on the east coast being higher than yours on the west coast I still water my compost, especially in the summer. I just started another pile last week and watered it - our fall season this year has been unusually dry. I soak mine, turn and expose dry materials, water again, turn, and keep up the routine until everyhting is moist but not soggy wet. It works wonders.

Just keep an eye on it and when you feel there's enough moisture in there, cover them back up. I do cover with a tarp to keep the moisture in mine.

There's no doubt moisture makes a great difference. Dry pockets won't compost since they don't provide a sauna for the microherd to move in and do their thing. :O)

My advice, get rid of the pile, use the space for something else.....not growing something....maybe put in a hammock and laze away the summer sun.

And as far as rain.....I'll exchange my snow for your rain any day.....except if, we get the same winter we had last year....temps in the 50's & 60's, twice it snowed more than 4"...sunny days......yeah, real west coast weather...sorry you didn't get it....oh well, you guys hate Ontario anyway....its the engine, you know, that drives Canada's industry.....
maybe because we can produce compost that improves our soil and grows the vegetables that British Columbia imports.

Lloyd

Karen

Sandy

I've lived within 50 miles of where you are. My friend and I used to share our pile. We just threw everything in a pile behind a shed and left it. I wasn't there long enough to use the stuff, but somehow I think it's fine.

I'm now in another climate, but still do the same thing. It took a while, (it freezes solid in the winter) but I have beautiful black gold, with the most effort being walking to the bin to throw the stuff on.

Nature does it's thing without me doing a thing.

Don't get rid of your compost just because you don't want to put in a lot of effort =:)

Sounds like the OP's pile could use some watering. I water as I turn then throw a big plastic sheet over the pile to keep it from drying out too fast. The sheet was a wrapper on some lumber. My local home building store discards piles of of these wrappers.

Another thing I like to do is shove a stick in the top of the pile and wiggle the stick around to make a chimney. Then I stick a hose in there and let it run until water comes out of the pile somewhere. In a pile treated like this, the next time I turn it a few months later I expect to find a big pocket of lovely finished compost inside.

But I do use a large 4'x4'x4' fence bin wrapped with chicken wire. Its very forgiving when the ratios aren't quite right.

You may not even have a problem, you just need more time. Eventually everything will decompose. The energy that one puts into composting just increases the rate of decomposition, so one gets finished compost faster. If you are not in a hurry, eventually it will decompose, even if you do nothing and even if you don't have the ratios of green to brown or moisture right.

We mostly use them to store compost materials (green kitchen waste & brown household paper napkins, tissues, etc.) until spring when we remove lid & turn entire pile adding some grass clippings or dry leaves if that's what is needed. It's nearly impossible to mix materials reaching in the top like instructions say. It's nice to have them contain materials so they don't blow away or critters scatter. However, the small amount of compost available to harvest from that little door at the bottom is not worth the bother for me as it's hard to slide it closed again.

We usually use the contents of both along with other materials to build a large pile in spring and again in early fall. The large pile usually heats up & we turn about 4-10 times before just covering it until needed or cured.

We don't rely on the plastic composters as my source of compost for our gardens as it just doesn't produce volume needed especially, when we continually add fresh materials as accumulated.