Hey Laura,

First, wanna come visit Southwark/Queen Village Community Garden? We'll show you how we do it! (seriously, I'd be happy to give you a tour)

Second, while we compost and have been doing it for a long time, we run into the same issues you face. We've done things (signs, rules, etc.) to try to reduce the problems, but with lots of people composting, there will be different styles/philophies/level of committment.

Now, I'll try to address your individual questions:

"The pile does not get hot. Probably not enough brown stuff?"

More likely it's not aerated enough. Even all greens will turn into compost eventually.

"People keep throwing stuff on top of the pile and it gets too hard to turn. We don't have access to any equipment for this."

At our garden, we have several compost sections (I think four). The first is an "add stuff here" pile. Every month, at our monthly clean-up, one of the tasks that gets completed is that everything in that pile get heaved into the next and so on. So, everything gets turned once a month. By the time the stuff in pile #4 ends up in pile #1, it's been several months and the contents are mostly broken down.

"One reason it is so hard to turn is that people put "stalky" stuff in there and it gets kind of matted. We don't have any kind of chipper and people don't want to chop it up."

We have a brush pile where the really woody stuff goes. Every year or so we rent a chipper to reduce that down. Otherwise, everyone is supposed to chop stuff down (I think to somewhere around 6", but I could be off there). It doesn't always happen, and some people do toss 10' sunflower plants in there in the fall. But that behavior is frowned upon.

"Weeds - I personally don't put most weeds in there because our pile doesn't get hot enough to kill the root, but I know other people do. We tried killing the weeds in the sun first, but it make the garden look messy."

At our garden, we don't encourage weed composting, and definitely not weed seeds or really pernicious weeds that will root just about anywhere. If the weed has no seeds (or flowers) on it, and the root is removed and it's not a grow-roots-anywhere type of weed, it should be ok in the compost. (in my home bins, most of what I compost is weeds. I've even taken to bringing home bags of weeds from the community garden to compost at home)

"We're considering a three bin type system with one marked "Add your stuff here" and then two or three of us would be responsible for the turning, watering etc to the other bins. We've tried those black plastic composter things with little success - too hard to turn and bothersome to unscrew the lid."

Assuming you've got space at the community garden, I wouldn't bother with the plastic bins (I do, however, have two plastic bins at home). If you can set up a pallet/pile system at the community garden, and can periodically move stuff down the line, that should work!

Good luck, and congratulations on your composting efforts.

Carrie

(also, the folk on GardenWeb's Soil Compost & Mulch forum rock!)

Here is a link that might be useful: Soil forum