On Oct 12, 8:36*pm, "YMC" wrote:
"Phisherman" wrote in message

...

Your compost pile should work in sun or shade. * *A compost pile (at
least 1 cubic yard) should stay moist inside for days, although the
edges will dry out. *I'd think your pile may be too small if you need
to water it daily, else you are in an arid region. *Guidelines suggest
locating your compost pile near the garden, convenient location, and
out-of-sight. *Your bin is working fine if it is warm 12" inside it. I
use rabbit fencing shaped into a 4' rings. *I planted rose-of-sharon
around the cylinders to keep the bins somewhat hidden. * They get
mostly shade, but good ventilation. * If you have more than one bin,
you can experiment to see which location works best. *Any plants
growing near a compost bin usually grow like weeds!

Yes, indeed the weeds that grow near the compost pile grow like monsters.

But I have the problem of the open compost piles - drying out.

Placing it in big plastic compost bins (they look like post office
letterboxes with the bottom cut out) ... that should speed up the compost
process? The problem is that they will be exposed to full sun. It gets very
hot here in Summer - 42C+ or 130F? And the compost worms don't survive. But
it should all still work?

I relocated the compost worm section to another shady but smaller part of
the garden.

My Compost has always been open although I have a rather large setup,
It decomposes rather quickly, and I do not turn it often because of
the large size makes it rather backbreaking and I try to turn it with
a loader when I have one available.
My thought on compost is to just let it go mostly and it will break
down, I add nitrogen and lime from time to time but other than that I
let the natural thing happen and I end up with a pretty balanced
compost.