Hot take: my neighbor said my backyard compost was a waste of time, so I changed how I track it
Last spring in Tucson, my neighbor watched me turn my pile and told me I was just making a fancy pile of trash that would never break down in our dry heat. So instead of arguing, I started weighing every food scrap bucket on a $12 kitchen scale and logging the temp of the pile with a cheap probe, and it turned out he was mostly right about the moisture, not the idea. Anyone else here keep actual numbers on their compost, or do you just eyeball the pile and hope for the best?