I am going to tag along with Bill on this one; sounds like you didnÂt get your mixing done quite well last year. The black stuff is not a bad thing; depending upon how one composts, black is a very good thing. The smell means you did not mix the browns with the greens well enough; my guess is that the kitchen scraps are the villains with the odor. I would mix that puppy pile up real well without adding anything. No need to restart the pile, better to finish it off. Once mixed it should cook down enough before you need to use it; just donÂt add any water into the mix. As long as one keeps the pile turned enough to dry it out, once dried and mixed enough it should be ready to use. This is how I would handle your situation; I trust it helps in some way Blutranes

Pretty well everything in composting has 'good ranges' and there are different opinions as to what these ranges are. I go with: C:N range 25:1 to 40:1 Moisture range 40% to 60% Oxygen not less than 5% (I think atmosphere is around 20%) If you are using HM (with no bedding) and leaves, I wouldn't use a lot of leaves but I'd make sure I mixed them real good. Leaves and grass I'd go 2:1 by volume as long as the leaves were finely shredded. Unshredded, I'd go more bags of leaves. Once again, mixing really helps. Some of the best stuff I've seen is that last cut of the grass in the fall with a carpet of leaves on top. That stuff gets chopped and mixed so well it's almost perfect. Add just a wee bit of moisture and boom, 150 in a day. I love those bags of fall leaves/grass. Lloyd

As an example, here is what I put into a batch in a tumbler that holds about a cubic yard. Two, large, stuffed bags of shredded leaves. These are pretty dense and heavy. To this I will add about two half full bags of freshly cut grass clippings (I look for bags of short clippings). The reason I use half full is because if these bags were filled, I couldn't lift them. So it turns out to be about two to one ratio. Some more material (mixed leaves and grass clippings) is added after a few days due to settling. If I use whole leaves, I use a three or four to one ratio but end up adding a lot more of the mix after several days due to increased settling. Now these leaves are incredibly dry so adding moisture is usually necessary. I add the water after I have mixed, this seems to alleviate the clumping of the grass clippings a lot. How much water depends on the dryness of the leaves and moisture content of the grass. In any event, I don't measure the water, I just use a garden hose on mist setting and go by gut feeling. Sometimes it takes a few days of adding small amounts of water to get an even distribution throughout. Turning. In the tumbler it is easy so I usually give numerous rotations once a day once the temperature is above 150ish. If it's a pile, definately not so often, maybe once a week if I am energetic so it usually goes longer. Soil. I don't intentionally add soil to any of my composting methods. If I am using a continuous add method in a tumbler, I tumble a few times, add the greens, add equal volume of shredded leaves, tumble a few more times then add another equal volume of shredded leaves on top. This mixes nicely and the thin layer of leaves on top helps to prevent any odors. If the greens are relatively dry, I add a small shot of water when I add the greens. By the next day the leaves on top are usually moist, they seem to absorb the moisture given off and any condensation drips down onto them as well. I don't use kitchen scraps in a pile due to possible rodent issues but I'd probably use much the same ratio except add additional water due to evaporation from the pile. Once a person has done it a few times they quickly get the hang of it. It is tough to make a major mistake as there is always ways to correct as you go along. Having said all that, we could probably get ten compost enthusiasts together and we could have ten different methods that are successful. Lloyd

Thanks for all the replies. Great information. @cold_weather_is_evil. My problem is that the bulk of the compost is clumps, so not sure how effective the sifting would be. @toxcrusadr The first batch we left to cook for 6+ months :) Most of the top layer was composted, but as we dig down to the bottom there were some moist pieces. Interesting some of the clumps contained hair clippings ? Some of the compost we dug into the vegatable garden and the rest I scattered on the lawns (using the lawn mower to try to break it up). @poaky1. Interesting idea ... I do have a weedwacker. @kimmsr. Yes, there are some pieces of vegatables in there - along with the finer granulations of coffee and fiborous extracts of fruit and veggies from juicer. Do you think it would be possible to put the cooked compost in a leaf mulcher : shredder in an attempt to grind it down, or do you think it will get stuck in there. Thanks again.