>> I find that oak leaves don't seem to like to break down.
A friend of mine let his oak leaves "age" for over a year, in trash bags. He would gather them one Fall, let them sit dry in bags until the Spring-after-next, and then mix them directly into his garden soil.
I can't say of my own knowledge that does anything usefull, like let tannion degrade, but he thoguht it worked (and his garden soil stayed fertile for many years without other amendments).
My tiny compost heap is very inefficient - never big enough to heat up, and seldom "in balance" because I have so few thin gs to add that it just gets whatever I have available.
But I just confirmed one piece of obvious common wisdom: it does need some water to break down at all. Our summers are dry and my hose didn't reach that far. When I added coffee grounds and vegetable scraps, a little water went in with them, into the center, and that just barely broke down a tiny bit over 2-3 months while vines around it didn't break down at all.
Then I added a Y-valve on the end of the hose, so I could "shoot" water farther than the watering wand reached, and in just a few days of being damp, the whole pile softened, shrank, and began to disintegrate despite not being balanced.
