Pardon the ugly picture, but I couldn’t resist. It’s night time, but I couldn’t wait until morning.
On late Sunday afternoon, I went outside my house and found several bags of leaves at the curbside. I got really excited and stashed four massive bags in my backyard, in addition to the two that I shredded up and added to my compost pile.
I was getting concerned about the compost pile, as it was starting to fall out of the Steady range around 80 degrees. Then I realized that it had been awhile since I added anything to it, so I contributed a hefty top layer of shredded leaves for insulation. I need to go looking for straw, too.
In a little over 24 hours, just two bags’ worth of shredded leaves, a bucket from the compost toilet and a week’s worth of kitchen scraps revived the pile back up to just shy of 140 degrees!
I was a bit surprised, I didn’t think it would be that drastic of a change…but with a light rain over night and a warm day yesterday it was the perfect mix to rejuvenate the pile.
So remember, collect all the leaves you can, shred them and add them. See if you can keep your compost cooking all winter long!
Even if you don’t make it all winter, you can be sure that when the temperatures start to climb again, it will start cooking again like nothing happened.