Minerals are dissolved rocks. No matter how many creatures lay eggs among those dissolved rocks, no matter how many creatures hatch and consume those dissolved rocks, incorporate those dissolved rocks into their exoskeletons, then die and reintroduce those dissolved rocks into to the soil in a more stable form, you won’t increase the quantity of dissolved rocks in your soil.

But “nutrients” on the other hand – that’s an open question. Nutrients include minerals, but also include compounds – vitamins, fatty acids, and probably all kinds of things we haven’t discovered yet. Such compounds are created all day, every day, by soil micro-organisms. They’re made from finite resources, but as they pass from “unavailable” to “available for biological growth,” they enter the category of “nutrient” and thus increase the size of that category in your soil.

So are “nutrients” increased in a passive pile, as compared to a hot pile? I have no idea. This would be an excellent experiment. You very well might be on to something, and my openness to this idea permeates all my writing about compost – despite your characterization of me – which I feel suggests that I am like the Mr. Spock of soil-building. When our great battle of compost ends, a battle supposedly between reason and feeling, and we stand amid the ruins, you may find to your surprise that we stand on the same side, just like Spock and Kirk.

Are there other compounds, besides minerals, that soil micro-organisms accumulate for your plants’ consumption? I don’t know, that’s over my head. But I suspect there are other benefits to your method.

In the same way a human body can be conditioned to recognize and respond to known diseases, so passive- or cold-compost contains a faint record of plagues it has known, in the form of dormant predators, ready to re-emerge when they see the bat-signal upon a cloud. In many instances, beneficial micro-organisms outcompete the pests. So in theory, passive composting is like drinking raw milk.

Eventually, this analogy breaks down. Here’s how: in a backyard compost pile, a full cross-section of micro-organisms survive at the periphery of the pile and quickly recolonize the pile after it passes through the “hot composting” process and cools/cures. You’ve basically cleared the game board and let the micro-organisms compete on their own merits, rather than favoring pest organisms that thrived in the presence of tender garden crops. What you get is a thriving ecosystem without the imbalance that existed before the pile heated up. And as a side benefit, you get stable compost faster (hot composting is much faster) and destroy most weed seeds.

So which is better? There’s no clear winner. There are costs and benefits to each method. In my yard, I use both methods and apply the product in different areas according to my needs and what I’m composting.