The pile must be on the order of one cubic yard or larger to heat up. As long as it doesn't emit really bad odors don't worry about too much moisture. If food scraps and cardboard are your primary materials,you might consider introducing worms and burying scraps rather than stirring them in.

A compost that is on the damp side or does not get hot is not necessarily bad, people that vermicompost (use worms to digest the material) do not want a warm, much less a hot, mix.

What is the size of your bin? As Kelm1 indicated a 3 x 3 x 3, or one cubic yard, bin is the minimum size that will allow the bacteria to generate enough energy to heat up.

Given the mix of materials you may well want to consider vermicomposting.

kimmq is kimmsr

Previous posts are spot on...compost only heats up if you make a large pile all at once with a proper brown/green ratio. BUT there is nothing wrong with adding what you have the way you are doing it. You will get compost.

mrs, are you trying to do this indoors, or is it outdoors? I noticed you didn't mention soil in your mix at all.

Personally I don't think soil does anything for compost. Vegetative waste has microbes on it already, and if the pile is on the ground, soil microbes can easily grow up into it. If you had a tumbler, MAYbe a handful to inoculate. But otherwise it provides no carbon or nitrogen for the pile, isn't degradable, and takes up air, water and heat without producing anything. JMHO.

I, too, suggest vermicomposting for kitchen scraps if you don't have the space for a large enough compost pile. I don't, as I have a very small yard. I use a compost tumbler that gets the job done, but it's a slow process. I found that kitchen scraps would rot, the compost would go anaerobic, and I could never get the right mix of browns and greens at the right time. In the fall I have tons of leaves; in the spring and summer I have grass clippings.

So now I compost all of that yard stuff in the tumbler and just let it do its slow thing. In the meantime, I have a large worm bin in my basement for our kitchen scraps, and it is much more convenient to dump them than it was to go out and around the corner of the house to the composter. I started in the middle of last summer, and by the time this planting season came around I had a nice, huge batch of worm castings.

Why not just cover the pile, or bin and let it go about it's business for awhile without fussing for a bit and see what happens? My "compost bins" are 3 extra large black tree tubs given me from local landscaper projects. They get nice and hot outside, cooking in the Florida sun even if the compost itself isn't heating, which is important with a random mix of pelleted sawdust, pelleted timothy/alfalfa rabbit food, corn cob, and other natural and ordinary clay that I use for cat litter in it. I put about a quart finished VC and a couple handfuls of yard sand/dirt on top of each one and mix it up about once a month, add a couple gallons of water (if it doesn't rain on it) every other week or so. Lots of leaves go in it collected from various places, dried pulled weeds and chopped up yard prunings, shredded paper & cardboard, and grass clippings (IF I can get them). I stir it maybe twice, and it go for 4 mths or more, then use a 1/2" screen to sift, and use the smaller sifted stuff with more wetted paper to top off the worm bins. Bigger leftovers get mixed in a new batch.

Tox said "Personally I don't think soil does anything for compost"

For all the reasons you give,I totally agree tox. But for one size fit's all I reccomend newbies add soil. Some might use food scraps, paper goods and other processed material leaveing a tumbler without inoculation. However "it will rot one way or the other",which you have wisely pointed out countless times. Procrastinating and researcing only delay's getting under way and learning as you go.

Thanks for all of your comments. I'm in the city so I don't want to have a large open bin that pests can get into and I was trying to avoid investing in a new bin so I'm using a worm bin but with no worms because I drowned the last batch. I want to be able to compost all our food scraps and worms can't really keep up. I could try worms again now that I have a little more experience or maybe I will just go for a big tumbler style bin. It seems like a lot of those are not a cubic foot either though, but I guess they are really just the add it and wait method...which is what I guess I'm inadvertently doing anyway. Anyway I appreciate all the feedback. My compost definitely is looking better now that I have added more paper and I think it will be fine in the end. Plus, I'm diverting several gallons of waste a week.

Oh, also, yes I did add a few handfuls of dirt.

I absolutely agree that adding dirt is mostly not needed, and at most a handful every now and then is enough. I've been doing that recently as due to a move I have a large (repeat: large) amount of cardboard to compost and without sufficient greens right now, and I figure that probably does need inoculation with microbes. And I really do mean a handful after layers of cardboard. But in normal circumstances, not needed and more harm than benefit.

I'm curous what harm might result.

You're right, 'harm' is probably overstating. But as above, gives little benefit, takes up space, and likely reduces any heating up if the desire is to get a hot compost going. No need to add much at all. I've also thrown in soil from potted plants that had dried out, to get it to mix with almost-complete compost and moisten/condition, for which it worked well.

Sir Albert Howard thought, and taught, that adding soil to a compost pile was necessary because the soil would provide the necessary bacteria to digest the material. We know today that the bacteria that will digest what is put into a compost pile is already present on that material so soil is not needed.

Mesophilic bacteria start the digestion process but are replaced by thermophillic bacteria when temps in the compost reach about 100 Degrees F. Depending on the temperature of the material being digested different themophillic bacteria will be at work. However, as John has stated above comp-0ost will happen even without those heat generating bacteria, it will take longer and even then air and moisture are critical, since these aerobic (in the presence of air) are the ones that will best digest the material.

http://compost.css.cornell.edu/microorg.html

kimmq is kimmsr

Overall I agree that there is no need to add soil to get compost working. Cases where it might be useful should be pretty rare: like starting a pile with large amounts of 'clean' cardboard or paper or other items that had somehow been sterilized (and adding normal greens would probably be better). Any existing compost pile should not need, would have the microbes anyway.

That said, I'm also willing to take a 'who cares?' approach - if it makes someone feel better to throw a handful in once in a while, so be it. I guess my point is that small amounts - the proverbial handful - would be enough to give the (purported, possibly non-existent) benefits of introducing microbes, any more than that will almost certainly not help compared to the handful, and possibly slow things down and take up unneeded space, or otherwise change the compost dynamic. Even in that case, it'll eventually compost.

So a small, very small amount for whatever reason? Sure, even if unnecessary.

>>"maybe I will just go for a large tumbler style bin"

A lot of us think tumblers are difficult to use and manage. I would recommend a ground based compost bin, either a commercial plastic one like the Home Composter or Earth Machine, etc.; or a home made one of wire fencing, pallets, etc.