Hi everyone,

I am a new home owner and so far love working out in the yard. I wanted to not only reduce my environmental impact but I wanted a great looking yard and composting seemed perfect for me.

I went and purchased a composting bin from amazon that is a single bin with a pvc pipe through the middle that has holes for aeration. While waiting for the compost bin to arrive I started my own small composting venture in a 5 gallon bucket. Now in the bucket it was working excellent, it was hot to the touch and so on, change in color and consistency was even noticeable after only a few days.

When recieving the composting bin I emptied the bucket into it and have been adding to it fairly regularly. I know I don't have enough composting material to fill that bin anytime soon, but from what I have read adding to it regularly is acceptable.

I am going on almost 3 weeks now and I haven't seen much of any change except for a large addition of what looks like tiny white mealworms (maggots maybe?). I know it is wet enough, I would assume it is hot enough as when I open the bin if my head is over it I almost immediately begin to sweat. I am just curious what I may be doing wrong. Does the bin truly need to be full before it goes into action, if so it is going to take 2 of us a very long time to accumulate enough scrap material to go in there unless it is all carbon material.

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.