Ok, I keep reading a few things repeated in this thread that should be clarified. All the posts are about hot composting, and here are a few things that will help out your hot composting efforts:
* If you want things hot, you want more green. Think of green as the flame and oxygen and the brown as the logs in a camp fire. Too much brown is like trying to light a log with a match. Too much fire, and you'll fire will burn too quickly and it won't smell very good.
* A compost pile will not stay hot indefinitely, and you don't want it to stay hot forever. The greens (nitrogen or flame) will eventually burn up all the browns (carbon or fuel). One of the benefits to hot composting is you make compost quicker than cold composting. If your ratio is around the to the 30:1 (C:N), you turn the pile daily, and monitor moisture to keep it optimal, the pile will only stay really hot (> 140 deg C) for a week. After that the temp of the pile drops gradually until it is slightly higher than air temp.
* You don't want to keep adding material to a hot compost pile. Gather that cubic yard/meter of stuff, and then turn it until it cools. If you add to it, you are mixing cold and hot composting techniques. Now no one is going to take you to composting jail, but you won't realize the benefits (temps high enough to kill
weeds and destroy most harmful chemicals, compost in as little as two weeks) of hot composting by continuously adding material.
* Resting or letting your compost age (like fine wine), is just that. Let it sit. Stop turning it. Ignore it so if you're C:N ratio was off, (and there's no good way to tell for sure unless you want to break out a chemistry set) or you have big chunks of stuff left, nature has time to decompose that stuff. It's a way to ensure that you don't burn your
plants with compost that may still be hot. The amount of time you let your compost "rest" depends on your ingredients. If you only used vegetative matter, then there isn't much need to let it rest. If you used manure, a few weeks to a month of rest is probably enough.
* If you don't keep adding material to the pile, it should reduce to about 1/3 the original volume. That's decomposition. That's your goal.
SpringFever,
your compost looks done. Put it in your garden, let your
plant reap the benefits of your hard work.