Great Tips for Winter Composting

For gardeners and green living aficionados, composting is a way of life. For those of us in Northern climes, cold weather is, too. For those new to either, composting your way through your first winter can be confusing. Let's take a quick look at the common issues, and see if we can't make sense of this mess! Composting depends on what environmental educators call the FBI - Fungus, Bacteria, and Insects - to do the magic that it does in breaking down our food and yard waste. Extreme cold causes all three of these helpful organism groups to slow down, or even to go completely dormant. While these organisms DO produce some heat while they do their work, unless you compost on a very, very large scale, or tend to your compost pile obsessively, there's not much you can do about this slowdown, so the best thing is to learn to expect it, and to live with it. As winter weather comes on, and the processing of your compost slows to a standstill, there are a few ways to extend activity. One of the easiest is to simply cover your composter or pile with a blanket or a tarp overnight, much as you would a hot-box in the garden. This allows the extreme day/night swings of early winter to be mitigated a bit, and helps the mass of the pile to hang on to the heat that it does produce.

As winter wears on, at least in the far north, there will come a time when your compost pile seems to stop working completely. At his point, it's time to hang on until spring. Continue to layer your greens and browns (if you're using leaves from the yard for your carbon source, make sure to set some aside in a garbage can or bag before they get covered by snow and ice) as usual, but be prepared for the pile to grow. Without the heat to speed the process, your food and yard scraps will likely build up all winter, and start chugging along again in the spring. That's just the way it is, and it's a good reason to keep two piles going at all times in cold climates, starting the second mid-summer so that the first will be ready to be used in the garden at spring thaw.

One other concern regarding winter composting centers around animal activity. A compost pile is always at some risk of visits from raccoons, skunks, and bears. In the winter, there's MORE food on your compost pile, specifically when these critters are having a tough time finding food in nature. This could be a perfect storm, so it's important to make sure that your compost pile is secure in some way against unwelcome visitors. Place the pile inside of a garden fence, use a commercial composter with a lid, or fashion your own from pallets or chicken wire. If you haven't had trouble in the past, you're unlikely to in the winter, when the food is frozen solid, but why invite disaster when piles can be secured relatively easily.

All year 'round, backyard composting requires patience and faith, and this is never more true than in the cold and dark of the winter months. Warm weather is just around the corner, though, and your patience will be rewarded with rich, loamy compost during the warmer parts of the year.