Winter Composting
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8 Responses to “Winter Composting”
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How do I get my composting going in the winter?
I live in a Northern Area and it seems to cold to composte.
It depends on how you are composting; although I think you are right in that its too cold to expect too much processing to occur. I usually use this time to either add to the pile (I dont' use tumblers/or bins) or the older pile I just turn occassionaly.. I keep both covered with a black plastic to keep the rain from washing things out.
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I live in north eastern Ontario, and the composting process has slowed with the freezing temperatures, but it will fire back up again to full speed in the spring. The bacteria are just slower when it's cold.
Depending on the size of your composter and depth of material, it is probably still going, but very slowly. I know ours gives off a bit of heat as the snow is never as high on it as other items next to it.
In the meantime, we continue to add more organic content to it (peals, fruits, coffee grounds, tea bags…etc.) and occasional carbon content like straw (it's cheap, like $4 a bail). Some people put a grass clipping pile near their composter for this reason. Inter-layering these. So organic content for a while, then a bit of straw. At this point, you are preparing your composter for the spring.
We get snow accumulation in ours and with all the additional items not really being composted over the winter it seems to grow quite large, but as soon as the spring comes, it loses volume and drops down significantly.
When some warmer weather rolls around, I can harvest some compost for the garden from the bottom, then churn it up once for the rest of the summer.
So I hope you keep composting, even without the straw layers because it diverts a lot of garbage from the dumps.
I hope that helps.
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Heat is a basic requirement, but what you compost and how you compost are a factor.
The best natural activator that self generates heat is crabs innards in the middle packed tight; fish organs are also pretty good and in the cold the smell isn't extreme.
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I'm doing this now. Its very slow but I just keep adding stuff and chopping it up as much as possible. In the spring I plan on adding worms too. You would have to have a very large pile for only a percentage to decompose rapid. some of my recipe includes. leaves, coffee grinds and filter, egg shells, vegetable and fruit peels and some shredded cardboard.
http://www.howtocompost.org/
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Keep it in bed with you.
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Continue adding to the compost pile when you can, and try to turn it over if the weather warms up enough. Also when it snows, the snow blanket will assist in the mulching process.
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Technically the process of composting, the breaking down of organic matter, happens at any temperature above freezing, and can even continue in frozen items though at a glacial pace. So, if you live in a part of the country where it does not get below freezing, or only barely and only for a short time, you can continue to compost normally, just with a longer time before you get your results since heat does matter. Tumblers will also produce their own heat as breaking down organic matter gives it off so even if it is a little below freezing the compost shouldn't be 100% frozen.
If you live in a part of the country that does get freezing cold temperatures for a longer period of time, you can still compost and use your tumbler, just in a different way. Instead of having it out in the yard, move it to near your back porch so it is a short walk for you to dump all your kitchen scraps in it in the winter. The shorter the walk is, the more likely you'll make it. You can continue to try to turn it, but if it gets frozen solid and is unable to be turned that is fine too, just wait for the Spring thaw, move it back to its prime location near the garden, and start again. Don't expect to get much compost during the winter months, think of it more as priming the pump for a Spring explosion of compost.
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http://www.organic-compost-tumbler.com/