Composting - Austin,TX

Hello!
You need to get some dead leaves in there and/or cut grass. The acidity from the leaves/grass will help speed up the composting of the food items and help relieve you of the gnats. Try leaving the compost uncovered for a few days as the natural sunlight will help heat up the compost which will also deter the gnats somewhat. You shouldn't need to turn the compost but once a day.
Another good thing to start is worm compost bins. Get tons of newspaper, shred it up, and place within any large container. Get several worms (one friend started out with a dozen) and place them in the container. Within six months, you should have lots of worms and those are wonderful to put into your garden along with the compost.
Best of luck in your gardening endeavors. If you'd like to come to an upcoming plant swap next month, let me know and I'll send you an invitation.
-Jen

It sounds like you do need more brown matter, grass clippings, leaves, some soil. I think what you are doing now is just fermenting your stuff.

I don't have a tumbler but I have the multilevel one. Make sure you have enough worms. You can buy more red wrigglers at Petco or Petsmart for a good price. Also, I cover the food scraps (no meat!) under wet newspaper and other bedding stuff so the gnats can't get to it. Also, it's hard to start it in the winter but it's starting to warm up which really helps the process.

I'll be interested to hear what others say, because I am no expert. But we have been composting for a while. Two months a bit early to start seeing real progress, so I wouldn't worry about that just yet. If you're worried about the content, you could start adding in newspaper I think, or hay if you can find it (I'm sure you can buy it somewhere). We don't have yard clippings so our compost has always been all kitchen scraps and eventually it turns out great.
I would suggest you buy some worms to add in. You can buy them on line. Here's a place I've used. http://www.gardenworms.com/
They'll mail them right to your door, which makes it easy. They'll go to work on your green matter and turn it into compost in no time.
As for the gnats, this time of year we have a ton of gnats too. It's just crazy. But the good news is, in another month or so when it starts to warm up, they'll die down. Maybe someone else will have great insight into how to get rid of them. (I'd love to hear myself!) For now, I just think of it as providing protein for all the baby birds.