[noshed]

I turned over my compost heap yesterday - I had to move it anyway but I felt it was quite hard-core allotmenting - I've joined the club!
Quite a lot of it had rotted down but there was a fair bit of stuff that hadn't. What to people do when you think it's rotted enough - do you sieve it? I was thinking of putting some chicken wire on a frame and just chucking shovel-fulls at it. Then put all the woody stuff back to compost again with more green stuff.

[John]

That sounds a reasonable course of action to me.

Turning the heap usually results in another burst of rotting action but some things do move from heap to heap for a year or two.

[yewtreemob]

yes I've just turned two of my heaps and there is a mixture of stuff at different degrees of "rottedness".  When I was in the Thames Valley on clay I used it as it came - the big twiggy half rotted stuff helped break up the clay.  But now I'm on rich deep soil I tend to put the twiggy stuff back in the heap.  You can put it thro chick wire but you can also chuck it all on the plot and rake it all in - the big stuff comes to the top (don't ask me why!) and you can skim it off with the back of the rake - I shall earth potatoes with it this year.