By Ginny Figlar Colon, originally found here.
Nice … half-frozen veggie scraps molded together in a solid mass. Not exactly what I want to see in my compost bin. With at least five more months of cold weather before warmth and sunshine reappear, why do I even bother keeping the pile going?
Well, I guess I do know why. Diverting even a handful of potato skins from the trash gives me an unexplainable sense of satisfaction. (If you aren’t yet a composter, you just can’t relate to this strange obsession with vegetable scraps.)
So after filling my compost bin with a big batch of freshly raked leaves this weekend, I did a little online research to see what I could do to make it a wee bit more productive this winter.
Here’s my plan of attack:
1. Get a bigger under-the-sink kitchen compost bucket. Fewer trips through the snow will help me stay motivated to feed the outdoor bin all winter long.
2. Empty the compost bin now. Since decomposition slows considerably in the winter, the contents won’t shrink very fast and the bin can get overfilled in the process.
3. Save some leaves. I’m going to stockpile some of the leaves I’m raking now to periodically mix in with winter scraps. Some sites suggest using old tomato cages or covered garbage cans to hold the leaves.
4. Don’t turn the pile. Yep, it pays to be lazy all winter because turning a pile lets valuable heat out.
5. Break down the bits a bit more. Maybe I can get away with chucking a whole apple in the bin in the middle of the summer, but not when the thermometer is hitting negative numbers.
We’ll see if these extra steps make a difference come springtime. And, even if it doesn’t result in more compost, at least it saved some space at the landfill.
Want to learn more about composting? Check out our Gaiam Life Guide to Composting or watch sustainable living videos on GaiamTV.com!
I definitely recommend following everything on this list…and if you’d like to take it a step further, bring your work indoors to a worm composting system. Chances are you’ll save space in your freezer, and you’ll create compost through the winter…although I don’t know what you’d do with it. 🙂
Hi Tyler, nice blog you got here. I just started composting 3 months ago. This is how i do it. I made a little tumbler, only 5 gallons/12liter in size. I made it out of a roofing insulating sheet. R=3.5, that means it leaks only 1 watt of energy per square meter if the temperature difference is 3.5 degrees celsius. It easily reaches 55 celsius in 3 or 4 days even with low temperatures outside, around freezing point. At this point i take the tumbler inside for 2 or 3 days. The temperature quickly shouts up above 65 degrees and it can go outside again. It actually takes effort to stop it from going up to 77 degrees. Well, i have to open the lid a bit. In two weeks i have a nice bunch of compost.
This quick and dirty prototype is falling appart a bit. It did prove that you can compost tiny batches totally thermophillic. The next one is gonna be a bit bigger so the jump from 50-55 to 65+ is gonna be a bit easier.
I try to keep the tumbler as small as possible, because living alone without a garden i produce only about 2 gallons/5 liters of compostable waist a week. The next one is gonna be about 4 gallons/20 liters so i can do 3 week runs and let it mature a bit more.
I collect the kitchen scraps in a bucket filled 1/3th with saw dust. The dust keeps it dry and free of smells for long enough and ads carbon to my nitrogen rich scraps. Lotsa coffee grounds 🙂