Att all Green Thumbs

A compost  can take a while to cook. You need a green layer (grass clipping etc), brown layer (paper, brown tree stuff) and food scraps to make a good one. If you have a space where you want to do you vege patch maybe go and buy some compost in bags for this year and start making your compost for next year.

Last year we just put it into the garden at the beginning of the season. Turned it over (with the dirt) every few days and after a few weeks we planted the veges.

We made our in a spot in the garden (as we had it) but in a bin is fine. And I turned it once a month if that.

You do need to put food scraps in it but not too much.

what do you mean by cooking?? couldn't you just use the one you add to before planting?

We have 2 bins, we never turn them and stil have nice compost at the bottom to take out when we want it.

Ok, we have a huge and very productive garden here. When we get it ready for planting out, we dig through sheep pellets as well as the contents of our compost bin, which we are too lazy to turn over, but it has grass clippings, food scraps and paper sometimes as well.   We empty it about twice a yer, second time in our mid to late summer planting and it cookes again over the winter.
The sheep pellets really made our garden go gangbusters last year, it was the best year yet, so we are hoping for the same this year. We don't use any sprays or anything, prefering to use warm soapy water as a bug fighter, however this year I will put down derriss dust on the broccoli and silverbeet to keep the moths away.