davout wrote:
My heaps are under trees, protected from the elements and will hardly ever
get wet from the rain.

That is probably going to make it longer than normal to rot down. Almost
certainly they are too dry and short of water for the fungal spores to
really get going. I guess the trees are evergreens?

I cut my grass the first time a couple of weeks ago. It was looking bad
from patches growing continuously over the winter. I was amazed that the
relatively small amount of clippings still heated up pretty fast. Even
though conditions turned cold again soon afterwards.

Each heap is about 6 ft wide x 5ft deep by 5 feet tall. The heaps were
almost completely filled by the end of last Autumn. When I turned them a
couple of days ago they had reduced in volume by about a third.

It is working then up to a point. But to get really fast hot composting
you do have to get the moisture content just right.

You turn as infrequently as possible consistent with getting the parts
that were at the edges into the bulk heap to rot down.

Regards,
Martin Brown