We live in Texas. It's been pretty dry the last year, until this past month when it's been super wet. I have two compost piles -- they are made of wooden pallets nailed together. I rotate between them -- dump stuff in one, trying for a good balance, until it's full, then start on the other one while waiting for the first one to be done. I don't turn or otherwise touch it while it's sitting -- I am a lazy composter.
Anyways, the one that was sitting was just sitting for the longest time, not doing anything, but now that we're getting a lot of rain you can see it finally really starting to compost. So no doubt it was too dry to compost properly.
In the past, in the summer, I've tried watering the compost piles because I thought they were too dry. But it didn't seem to help. My theory is that it's because it's tap water and chlorinated and therefore it kills the little bacteria and whatnot that are doing the composting. Do you guys think that's right? Is watering one's compost piles with tap water just pointless?
We have rain water barrels, but not a lot of them, and that's not too useful in Texas where you tend to get a whole lot of rain at once and then not much for months. We have three barrels and that doesn't hold enough water to save for the compost piles.
