Looks slightly dry. I don't think you need to turn it so often. It might benefit from simply sitting and decomposing for a spell before you turn it. Turning it might have caused it to dry out. Try turning it every two weeks. Less work that way, too. It will benefit from having more material in there, too.

Take my advice with a grain of salt. I usually start a compost pile with at least a cubic-yard of material and then fill it to about two yards before moving on to the next pile. You're starting with a smaller amount of organic material.

Green grass can get a compost pile off to a fast start, but I've seen a pile with 100% shredded oak leave take off and compost quite nicely. In the case of the oak leaves, due to lack of space I had to resort to a mini-windrow (10' long x 4'wide) due to lack of space. I kept it covered with plastic to keep moisture and ammonia trapped in the heap.

If you wanted, you could apply what you have as a mulch. Just don't till it into the soil - leave it on the surface.

What I usually do is start another pile/container and just leave that one alone for awhile! I got it as full as I could, while turning maybe once a week, then covered it in leaves. I was very impatient when I started, but one winter when I had ignored the pile and added to the other one, when I dug down in the original pile.....GOLD!

I usually bag up as many shredded leaves as I can to add during spring and summer.

If you look at the 3 pile system, which can be very large, you get the idea of how it works. It works with smaller systems also. It just take patience! LOL

Its pretty common to have leafs left in the pile as these high carbon content OM will take a longer time to decompost. If the semi composted pile smells earthy, you may use it as mulch or you can leave the pile aside for a longer period.

What was the approximate ratio of grass clippings and kitchen scraps to the leaves?

How much moisture was in the mix?

If the mix started to heat up and then stopped that may mean the microbes that would digest that material and convert it ran out of either Nitrogen or moisture or maybe both.

kimm2q is kimmsr

I don't know the exact ratio but I want to say 80/20 or 90/10. But because this was my first grass mowing of the season the grass wasn't as "juicy" and there was a lot of dry debris as well - dead grass, leaves, etc.. I think there was simply too much of dry material and I didn't keep it moist enough.

I don't really need any mulch so I'll just move what I have here to a container and let it sit till it all breaks down. I'll start new pile in the composter this weekend and will add more greens and keep it moist. Hopefully I'll get better results this time.

Thank you all for the help.