Pumpkins for compost

Ok here's the situation
I have never composted before. Today i built a 4x4 box/cage to make a compost heap. It is located in the middle of an un mowed area of my yard, it should get pretty much sun all day.

My neighbour has an annual celebration that leave about fifty hacked up and rotting pumpkins in his yard (don't ask). The pumpkins have be laying outside for about two weeks, definitely starting to rot. I thought they would be good in the compost.

This is what I did I did about three layers of the following ingredients.
Maple leaves (about three or four wheel barrows)
Comfrey - one entire plant (about one wheel barrow)
Pumpkins - chopped up with the spade (about half a wheel barrow of stuff)

Then I just filled it up with leaves, these will compact down, it's supposed to rain next week.

I also have in abundance wood ash, but I didn't put any in there.

I'm thinking once it compacts a bit I should throw in some manure and turn it.

Any thoughts? Recommendations? Comments?

Take care
Mr. Barnflowers

I don't know if the all day sun is a great thing with compost, as most decomposers like the dark, but I may be wrong on that one. Your good with pumpkins though they will work just like any other veggie. Keep adding nitrogen sources (like veggie scraps from the kitchen) and turn your pile once a week and you should be seeing black gold in no time. There is a trick I like to do to help keep the pile aerated, increase the speed of the decomposing, and reduce the amount of pile turning I need to do. I take a few lengths of PVC pipe and I drill holes all up and down the pipes. Then I shove them into the pile in different places, leaving an open end of the pipe sticking out. Air is able to flow through the pipes right to the center of the pile, helping the microbes breathe and supercharging the composting process. Good luck and congratulations on taking a step toward self sufficiency.

Go for it mate. Our local pumpkin patch gives me all of their leftovers to compost. High moisture content. You damned sure want to make sure your pile gets hot hot hot to cook out the seeds though. I run mine through a chipper and mix them one part pumpkin pulp, one part aged cow manure and 2 parts mowed dead leaves. Fall really bulks up my pile. Without pumpkins I'd have to add a ton of water to keep my pile hydrated. I make a separate pile of straw, chopped dead leaves and the left over frost killed fruit from all of my peppers, tomatoes, zucchini, cucumbers, watermelons, and whatnot..... this makes for a pretty potent fruit/bloom boosting compost.

BTW, full sun is fine so long as you keep your pile moist. I personally hate waiting for my compost so I turn all of my piles weekly in warm weather and once a month in the winter.

Watch our for seeds! But they do work well.

One of my buddies composted a bunch of pumpkins years ago, and now he has all these crazy hybrid, pumpkin/squash/? vines that grow all around his house. Some of them would make crazy looking fruits, and others just grow all summer and never even flower...

But it was quite fun to see what happens when you grow out F1 cucurbirts...