I am writing this just to share what I have found to work for me.

I have four piles. Two of them are the black plastic bins that you can buy. One is a wire mesh circle - maybe 5 feet in diameter and 4 feet tall. The last is simply a pile of woody stuff tucked behind a bush.

Let's start with the pile. I start in the spring and take all of the woody plant material from the previous year - think broccolli stalks, flower stems, etc. I pile them up and stomp on them. These will sit unitl next spring. I won't touch them other than maybe pee on them once in a while. The next spring I take all of this material and use it for the base of the wire bin compost.

In the spring I take the compost from the wire bin and add it to one of the black bins. It genereally fills it more than full. Any what won't fit or can't be stacked up a foot or so with the cover precariously perched on top goes in one of the beds. This will sit for all of the growing season to cure. It will be used in the fall and next spring in the garden beds. Now that the wire bin is empty, I will put down cardboard and newspaper on the bottom and part way up the sides. I add all of the woody material from the previous year on the bottom and begin filling it with coffee grounds and kitchen scraps. I collect about 5 gallons USG and scraps per week. I got my first grass clippigns yesterday. I added two bags along with almost a bag of shredded leaves. I covered the whole pile in shredded leaves as well. A nice carbon shell keeps the smell and good stuff in the pile. This pile will get hot. It was actually steaming before I added the grass clippings. It will get turned and mixed throughout the season.

At the end of the growing season I will stop adding to the wire bin and let it sit until next spring - it will shrink over teh winter. Any materials I continue to gather will be used to sheet compost garden beds until the fourth bin is ready. This is the second black bin, I use this in winter. I add the afformentioned 5 gallons of UCG and kitchen scraps to this black bin during the winter months - Nov - Mar. This will sit from March until the next fall. I may stir it a couple of itmes throughout the summer. In teh late fall it will get added to one of the garden beds - IT isn't fully cured, but will cure over the winter in the beds.

Additional grass clipping that I cannot fit in the wire bin will be sheet composted on the garden paths and used as mulch in combination with shredded leaves. I will go through more than 30 bags fo shredded leaves in a year.