Composting in Winter

Does anybody in Zone 6 or colder have an outdoor pile that's actually hot right now? If so, how'd you stoke it?

I've got a small one (maybe 35 gal, too small according to the books) inside my not-heated greenhouse and it's consistantly 70*. I haven't added anything to it in 3 weeks when I added some reasonably fresh cow manure. According to a compost making booklet from Rodale Press, if you turn it every 3 days, it's suppose to heat up. Adding the manure raised it 20*. I expected it would be much higher since it was inside the GH.

I know you asked about outside compost piles, but I wonder if the extreme cold keeps it from heating up well?

There is a neighbor down the road that has a horse manure pile that is steaming away. It was 4 degrees this morning. So I think it is possible to have a compost pile that will work in the winter.

I have the same bin you have in your picture. I don't know how hot it is, but the stuff I add does seem to break down slowly as long as I water it (and that means snow more often than not) and turn it occasionally. It has been full all winter & I keep adding stuff (mostly kitchen waste). I am interested in anybody else's answer too.

I will be interested in other's response as well. My own compost bins are presently frozen stiff but I have read that IF one had kept adding the correct mixture of greens and browns throughout the winter, while diligently turning and watering the pile regularly (I read "every three days" too)--and monitoring its temperature-- one could have kept the pile hot enough to continue decomposing. Which it sounds as if lisabees has done.

I don't think mine is very hot, but I keep adding kitchen wastes to it and poke holes in to let air inside. It is frozen on the top and outer edges but the inside is loose, and it is getting smaller and the kitchen stuff disappears, so something is happening in there. I dug down and stuck a bucket load of banana peels in there and they were all gone a week later. I think the worms are doing the work right now.

I think of the outside in winter as being a huge refrigerator. Enough cold will slow or stop a certain amount of micro activity-that's why we put food in a refrig, right? The bigger the pile and better the mix, the more activity you have. I know you all know this tho.
I don't have time to tend mine consistently in winter so , it is cold. Kitchen scraps are going into a black earth machine one to help warm them, but voles are also eating scraps. What will I do with the voles in spring?

Could you try getting a cat, sallyg?

I wish I dared to get one 'cause as soon as spring comes I will be seeing voles in my garden AND in my compost bins. But I also have two dogs, an allergy to cats, and coyotes a-plenty in the woods behind my yard--plus lots of backyard birds at my feeders. But I STILL wish I dared to get a cat because they really work at keeping the rodent population down. A friend in the town next to us has a nice burly rescue-kitty named Morris who patrols her whole 2-acre plot and keeps the voles down.

; ^)
I do have a cat. I suppose I'll have to break down that whole pile with the vole burrows underneath and get them on the run.

I'm allergic to cats, too, but I've owned a pair of Burmese cats for close to 6 years now. They don't set off my allergies for some reason. They behave in an almost doglike manner, too. They come when I call, play fetch, and are very affectionate. Look into getting one (or two, since they're very social creatures), CCG.

One caveat ... the Burmese breed doesn't have a thick enough coat to bear winter temps. Of course, your rodent trouble in the garden won't start 'til the weather warms up, so it might not be a relevant problem for you. They'll make fine predators.

Interesting discussion so far.

My bin's ~2/3 full of raw materials (mostly shredded paper, plus jack-o-lanterns, grass clipings, and freshly-pruned veggie foliage). It got dumped in all at once in late November, so it's currently frozen, with about 6" of snow on top because I left the lid off. I intentionally avoided adding water so it would stay cold, allowing me to try the following experiment.

I'll be topping it off this week with rabbit poo (10 lbs), shredded office paper, kitchen scraps (3 lbs), a few ounces of left over micorrhizae from a year-old can, whatever coffee grounds I can schmooze from the local coffee shop, spent potting mix (~10 quarts), and a bunch of hot (but not boiling) water.

This bin's sitting right on the same south-facing wind-sheltered spot it sat on last winter and spring, so the good microbes are already waiting in the soil beneath it. It'll be fascinating to see if it can warm up to triple-digit temps while the ambient air temp stays between highs of 35 and lows of 10 over the next 3 weeks or so.

This message was edited Feb 15, 2010 7:15 PM

Oh man, SallyG, I am laughing and shuddering at the same time at this image! I didn't know I had voles in my bins until I was adding something and as I knocked the compost container on the side of my bin to empty the contents, two small dark brown "things" leapt out of the compost bin and ran away! They'd tunneled up to nibble on the kitchen scraps I'd buried in the center of the bin. I don't know who jumped the furthest or the fastest--me or the voles! I do know who shrieked the loudest.

You give me hope, Puddle, that perhaps I could have a cat(s) in my future. I've heard about the relatively obedient, rather dog-like nature of the Burmese breed. I love their appearance, too. I'm kind of imagining putting them in little winter coats, like I make my two small terriers wear in the winter when we take walks! ;-) I'm going to look into the question of whether their fur is less "allergic" than other cats.

Please let us know how your experiment goes as you "awaken" your compost with the newest additions. Will you be softening up the frozen parts of the pile with the hot water so you can stir in the poo, etc.? Or just piling things on top?

Cape Cod, that actually made me chuckle out loud. I had the same thing happen last week but a little different. I was going upstairs and stopped half way up before the second section to stop and dust the windowsill. I have an ADD problem. LOL. Anyway I was just about half way across the windowsill when this very large bird flew out of a nest in the fig vine and flew at me and the window and then flew off. I had no idea he was there so I jumped higher than I thought I could. I have no idea what kind of bird it was and have not seen it since but landscapers went up there Thursday and there is a nest with two eggs. Then late last summer I moved a pot just a small distance. I was sitting on one of the large boulders I have in my garden and then all of a sudden I had three lizards on my lap, leg and OMG. I do not know who was more excited. Me or them. LOL. Wishing you all a early spring.

I intend to mix the new stuff together in the top 1/3 of the bin, then pour the hot water on top to let it dribble downward, carrying bits of poo and other goodies with it.

Is the molasses the same as what I cook with for a sweetener?

Huh?

Burmese are so pretty! Brown velvet with big round eyes. I know someone who wipes her cat with a baby wipe weekly to reduce dander, says it works well

Pirate- I'll look forward to your results too. (Kid had Dirty Jobs on TV yesterday--how sad that the words manure etc in the commercial compost segment perked my ears up)

cathy- (wrong thread maybe? ) molasses talked about as compost additive would best be "feed grade blackstrap molasses", a much less refined product with extra minerals as a result.

If you want blackstrap molasses, Amazon's gotcha covered. http://bit.ly/afAzpA

Here comes a nice warm shower, little voles!! LOL

some recent discussion on buying molasses, see the recent posts
http://davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1039554/

Last year we got a pile of wood chips in late fall. About through the middle of winter it was warm to the touch.

In the colder months--I take all my chunkier veggie scraps to work and give them to a lady that has 2 kids and a HUGE rabbit. Believe me--he/she eats well in the Wintertime!
I come up with almost a gallon zip- bag-full every week. Been cooking a lot of stock and soups....

NOW! I never thought of asking her back for the "digested remnants" (ahem...) of all my goodies---Never thought of Rabbit poo as compost....

Learn something every day....Gita

Gita, it's already composted, ready to put in the garden as is, haha.

I haven't touched my composters in a couple of weeks because of all the snow. We had three feet here - a lot for metro DC. I had to shovel paths for the dog in the backyard, and to the bird feeder. Once the snow is gone, I will begin turning my compost again reguarly. For now, I'm sure that its ice.

I plan to shovel the snow out of my way tomorrow, and then add the new goodies.

I started a bin early last Spring about the same size as the picture Puddle shared. Only had grass clippings, shrub cuttings, spent flower stalks that overwintered, etc.and some compost starter I bought. By Fall, I had a mass of hard, caked black stuff at the bottom of the bin. Since compost I've seen has always been light a fluffy, I figured something was wrong. However, I left it there and when the leaves fell, I added those and stirred the whole mess with a compost thing I bought on-line along with some more "starter" - theory if one box of starter didn't work - two might. Before the really cold winter set in I stirred the thing a time or two. Checked it out about a week ago and it's still a pile of hard stuff on the bottom and leaves on top. Darned if I see that anything has happened. Oh, I did leave the top open during a couple of Fall rains because I read that the compost had to have some moisture. So, my question - do I dump all of that stuff behind my fence and start over or is there something there that I can work with. And I thought making compost would be the easy part of gardening ! Thanks folks.

My comment would be that "moist" is NOT the same thing as "soggy wet".....Keep the lid on more!

Also--did you try to follow the 2 parts Carbon (dry stuff) to 1 part Nitrogen--the "green" stuff?

Other than that--I am NOT a composting expert...I am struggling with my own.

Sounds like it's got plenty of browns. It might need more greens, more air, more moisture, or some combination of those. Or it might just be too darn cold.

Don't give up on it yet. Try getting some air & water & nitrogen down into the middle of the pile. A trick I tried last autumn involved a small bucket of spent coffee grounds (lots of nitrogen) from the local coffee shop. It was about a gallon or so & fit in my microwave. I just added water to the bucket, nuked it until it was steaming, then took it out to the bin. I dug down to the middle of the bin, dumped the hot wet coffee grounds in, and quickly covered 'em back up. The core now had air, moisture, nitrogen, and heat. Worked pretty well to kickstart the pile.

Of course, the ambient temperature outside was in the high 30s at the time, so the bin wasn't frozen yet. I'll try the same trick soon and see what happens.

I have my biddies in a storage rubber maid bin with a lid. About 30 to 40 gallons. I do not remove the lid because everything dries out to much. No humidity. I am having a wonderful success but I need to get these guys moved to one side or the other. Therefore, I am going to place all my pre-frozen thawed mushy scraps on one side and try to get all my babies over to that side so I can harvest some worm castings. It is amazing how much they can eat in a few days. I read, anything that leaves your soil in the garden, should be returned to the worms. I started to do that also. I have one worm bin in the laundry room and another in the holding garden outside. In the holding garden I had a high heaping pile. In two weeks it is now level and they are sending me text messages asking, "Where's the Beef". I am going to contact a couple of country club restaurants around here to see if they have scraps or coffee grounds. I am not contacting them but my neighbor is because I help with his landscape and they belong to the country club, not I. I will let you know how that goes. I really do love my worms. This is the most fun I have had since I retired from Chase Manhattan...

sharon--

Try a 7-Eleven for coffee grinds. The one here has 4-5 coffee pots going all day and they told me they could fill a 5gal. bucket with grinds every day. I might take them up on it once the weather warms up.

I have one of those "Earth Machines" composter. It is pretty old now and has cracks in it. I have to say it is pretty hard to harvest any composted stuff from the bottom of it. Actually--it is next to impossible. Never mind that little drawer at the bottom! You can just get out compost from there as far as your arm can reach.
Mine is now going on 3 years that I have not emptied it--as I would have to remove all the un-composted stuff off the top, take the thing apart in the middle and then, leaning into it, remove all the good stuff.
By now I hate this contraption and, on the Mid Atlantic Forum--where I live--it is simply known as SEM (Stupid Earth Machine). They all know what I mean when I write SEM.

NO! I do not have an out-of-the-way corner in my yard to do a pile as I live in a development and my lot is fairly small.
Might consider building a nice-looking bin one of these days right on the sams spot where my SEM sits.

I save ALL kinds of veggie scraps that I dump in there--and it never seems to get full. Something must be working...
In summer--it is swarming with larva and gnats and bugs in there. The worms are in there too--just out of sight.

I compost my leaves by shredding them and putting them in black plastic trash bags--add a bit of water and a couple of hand-fulls of Espoma lawn fertilizer (for the N.). In 2 years--it is wonderful stuff.

Gita
Here is my SEM.

Gita, this may sound like a silly question but how do you shred your leaves? I tried using hedge clippers when I dumped them in the composter but that didn't work very well and I have a feeling that may be part of my problem - leaves too big. Also going to add some nitrogen if I can find a product with a high enough number. Coffee ground idea is great but I don't know that I could get more than my wife and I drink which probably wouldn't be enough.

These pictures are from last November.
My red maple has shivered and dropped all her leaves....

Before I use my shredder-Vac, it works easier if the leaves are all raked into piles. If you are good at it--you can try and blow them in a pile, but I have never had much luck with it....seems I just blow them all around.....
This machine has 2 different functions. Blow--or suck up. You just have to change the tubes and close off an opening when you use it to "blow". ....
Here you can see that there were quite a few piles.

It is easier to "work" the piles with the suction tube of the Toro shredder/vac than to try to suck up the leaves straight from the lawn. The bag is carried on your shoulder. Two bags full of shredded leaves will fill a 39gal trash bag full.
It does not shred them extremely fine--but still OK.

I think an organic lawn fertilizer (like Espoma) has quite a bit of N. in it. Dried Blood is pure N. and an excellent organic source of N. The worms LOVE it!

And here is the end result of all those piles of leaves--THREE bags-full.
You can see the Blower/Vac in front of them--nicely staged.....

I store my bags under some old, tall evergreens in the back of my Yard.

You can also shred leaves by running a lawn-mower over and over the same piles, but then you still have to bag them all up. The shredder/Vac is not expensive. Close to $50 at HD.

Another easy way to shred leaves: put 'em in a big trash can, fire up your weed whacker, and stick it in. Fun, but also effective.

Just remember to wear eye protection.

You can also chop your leaves by raking them up & running the lawn mower over them. I use the blower-vac method myself & that works great. I bag them in the fall and add them to the composter whenever there's room or I need browns (I have the same bin as in Puddle Pirate's pic). I have also thickly spread shredded leaves over the veggie garden after the Fall cleanup and let them compost in place over Winter - LOVE that method, but I haven't got that "Fall" cleanup done yet this year :o).

Indianaguy, here is a list of activators which are good sources of nitrogen and protein for your compost pile: From: http://www.compost-info-guide.com/building_pile.htm
"Then add a 4 inch layer of green material topped with a thin layer of an activator. Activators are a source of both nitrogen and protein, ingredients that assist the organisms to break down the material. There are a number of good activators. Alfalfa meal works amazingly well. You can also use fresh manure, bone meal, blood meal, cottonseed meal, or even high-protein dry dog food (yes, that's right, dog food!)."

I myself use alfalfa meal, and when I have some, left-over dog kibble.

I like the trashcan and weed wacker idea. I'm going to use that rather than buy a blower thing because I don't really have all that many trees with leaves that I can use - couple of Eastern Redbuds and a Red Maple on the lawn. That's it.

Cape - thanks for the link. That looks like a very good site for composting info and I plan on spending some time on there later today.

Again, thank you everyone for sharing. This really is a great site !

Have you considered a Scotts compost bin? http://bit.ly/95dn9a

It used to be known as the Biostack, and got rave reviews here on DG ( http://bit.ly/cY2SaT ), but it's now sold under the Scotts name.

I use the weed-whacker & trash can method to shred the many oak leaves from my tree-covered yard. I am pretty sure that my neighbors think it's kinda strange to see me out in my front yard where all the leaves are, decked out in eye-protection (very important; Puddle is right), headphone ear-protection, and long-sleeves while I wield my weed-whacker around inside a 40-gall plastic trash can. It takes about 2 minutes of noisy work to reduce half a can-full of leaves down to about 1/3rd the original volume. The week-whacker can't handle a full can of leaves--too many fly out!
I haven't been doing this since it got really cold and my pile of autumn leaves froze hard, but I'm already eyeing my weed-whacker. . . your time is coming. . .