If it were me, I would not add the bought compost to my compost pile. Let your pile cook down over the winter and then mix them when you fill your beds. Use equal amounts of each type of compost. the bought compost has already cooked down, so I dont think it would do much if added to the pile. But I am a newb like you, so if I am wrong, someone will probably correct me shortly.

The purchased compost probably has a lot of good bacteria in it and it might cause your compost to cook more rapidly. If it is administratively easier, I would go ahead and mix them, as long as you have a sufficient amout of green matter or manure to help with the cooking process.

Thanks.
I am checking with some Amish friends to see if they will sell me some of their horse manure to add to my pile.

I would be very careful with using cotton burr. There is lots of chemicals in cotton burrs. Lots of bad stuff, farmer trying to kill bole weevils I knew a lady that got very sick and had to see a doctor, because her son put down cotton burrs in her garden.

Cotton burrs are generally not a good compost to use on a vegetable garden for the reasons that Maternut stated. The insecticides directly hit the entire cotton plant including the cotton bulbs (which includes the hulls) in order to kill the bole weavils. I am not sure about cottonseed hulls however since the cotton seeds never are directly hit by the insecticide. I used cottonseed hulls on my father's garden to no ill effect that I know off. If you are going to use horse manure for your compost pile, it will need to cook very hot in order to kill the grass/oat seeds or you will have a invasive grass problem in your garden. For my compost I visit the local Fairfax VA transfer facility where I can get free composted leaves that are a dark and loamy compost. I mix those with vegetable scraps, grass clippings, coffee grounds and composted manure.

I haven't quite worked out how to make a fresh post here, but mine is not to dissimilar to the question posed here. If this is a breach of netiquette I do apologise. I have a big compost pile which is doing very little.Its composed of quite stalky material, roots of grass which has been completely removed from the soil. Ive turned about four times. I also added seaweed thinking it needed nitrogen. I also have a pile of grass cuttings, also mixed with seaweed and it is working beautifully, nice steamy smelly activity when i turn it. Now I'm wondering if this much younger active pile could be added to the older dormant pile or do i risk losing everything. I feel like the older pile needs more green to balance out the stalky material. Would this be correct? Perhaps i should just wait and just add fresh green material to the dormant pile.

David - From your description of the pile it is hard to tell. Basically, you need greens and browns and a little moisture. To get it started, it is good to add a little soil that gives it some starting bacteria. My guess is that you need green material like your lawn clippings.

Use only well-composted horse manure, not fresh. Let it sit for a while until it breaks down. I once bought someone's homemade version of Mel''s mix that had not composted thoroughly. My vegetables came up and then turned yellow. Six months later, the stuff was fine, but while it was still in the process of breaking down, it tied up the available nitrogen.

David, I would try mixing some of your dormant pile into the clippings (so that the clippings were still about half of the new pile) and see how it goes. If that slows down, add more clippings to the new pile until it gets going again. If it keeps going, add clippings to the remainder of the old pile while the original mixed pile finished cooking down.

do yourself a favor and buy a little bottle of SCD's BioAg, Bio Balance, or Terraganix EM-1. these are inexpensive, concentrated lab grown effective microorganism. This is probiotics in the billions, very easy to use, and ensures that the microbes you want will be there in great supply! I,ve had incredible results