# Anyone compost in the winter?



## Spidey (May 11, 2009)

I compost in the summer and until it freezes but I've found winter composting difficult. Does anyone compost in the winter? How do you do it?


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## Homerhomer (Oct 18, 2010)

Spidey said:


> I compost in the summer and until it freezes but I've found winter composting difficult. Does anyone compost in the winter? How do you do it?


Yes, I just throw them into the yard in one spot, wait until the frost is over to dig the hole in the ground.

I also bring coffee grounds from the office , toss them in the yard, spread them around (to cover the grass as fertilizer) once defrosted.

Have been doing it for years, never had an issue with animal winter over population in my yard.


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## MoneyGal (Apr 24, 2009)

I do. I have two large composters and one food digester (a neighbour was throwing it out!). I know the composter is still active through the winter but I'm in downtown Toronto; it isn't that cold here.


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## Four Pillars (Apr 5, 2009)

We did our normal composting routine last winter, but even for T.O. - last winter was pretty mild and almost no snow. Not sure if we will be as diligent if it's cold and/or we get tons of snow.


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## Eclectic12 (Oct 20, 2010)

I have a plastic four foot high or so bin from a kit for 2+ years.

Whenever the snow isn't too high - I troop out and dump what I've got into it. During warm spells or the spring it thaws.


Cheers


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## crazyjackcsa (Aug 8, 2010)

I'm not sure I understand. What's difficult about it? Throw stuff on the pile / in the composter. Done. "Activity" will be low in the winter, but the freeze/thaw cycle will go to work. Composting is a pretty passive process, all it takes is time.


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## Spidey (May 11, 2009)

crazyjackcsa said:


> I'm not sure I understand. What's difficult about it? Throw stuff on the pile / in the composter. Done. "Activity" will be low in the winter, but the freeze/thaw cycle will go to work. Composting is a pretty passive process, all it takes is time.


I'm in Ottawa. The lid on my compost container freezes shut but it also tends to be full by that time due to lack of composting action in cold weather. If I put them in a pile, it would be covered by a couple of feet of snow after every snow storm. I've got a couple of old garbage cans. Perhaps, I could put vegetable scraps in those. But would there be a downside to that? Would animals be attracted without the tight fitting lid of the composter? Are there any types of scraps I should avoid (other than the obvious one of animal products)? Or are animals even a problem in the winter? I also wonder how long it would take to overflow without the composting action?


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## Homerhomer (Oct 18, 2010)

Spidey said:


> If I put them in a pile, it would be covered by a couple of feet of snow after every snow storm. ?


Why would that be a problem?

You are overthinking it, there is really no issue.


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## Spudd (Oct 11, 2011)

If you have one of those round city-issued bins (I live in Toronto, not Ottawa, but guessing that hte city issued bins might be the same), mine also freezes over in winter. I keep a stick near it so that in winter I can unfreeze it. The trick is put the stick under the handle and use it like a lever to pry the handle away from the base. Repeat for all 4 handles and you can usually get in.

So yeah, I still compost in winter. I usually take a last bunch of compost out the bottom in fall to make room at the top. And then just chuck stuff in as we go.


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## Jon_Snow (May 20, 2009)

We compost fine all Winter... then again here in Lotusland we still golf in February.


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## Spidey (May 11, 2009)

Perhaps part of the problem is that I have a smaller yard than many may have. Ottawa back yards tend to be postage stamp size. I don't know if the neighbours would take to kindly to a big exposed pile of compost. However, I think I may try out the spare garbage can once my compost bin freezes shut.


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## skiwest (Oct 24, 2011)

Do the worm composting thing for kitchen waste which really aren't that much. Then you have trout worms to go fishing with or sell them to your fishing friends. We don't compost at the cabin asa don't want to attract bears ( both black and brown). So stuff that doesn't compost well gets burnt and the rest goes to worms. May start composting outside but it would have to be stuff that won't attract bears, leaves and green stuff.


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## brad (May 22, 2009)

Spidey said:


> I'm in Ottawa. The lid on my compost container freezes shut but it also tends to be full by that time due to lack of composting action in cold weather. If I put them in a pile, it would be covered by a couple of feet of snow after every snow storm. I've got a couple of old garbage cans.


This is my story too. I have two bins (one is never enough for us, as we like to fill one bin and let the compost finish while we're filling the other. So I always empty one bin by the end of the autumn and fill it up during the winter. I have the same problem of the lid freezing shut, but usually if there's a sunny day it'll thaw enough that I can open it up. Last winter we had a long cloudy cold stretch and I resorted to putting the compost in plastic bags in a garbage can outdoors, figuring I'd wait til a thaw to put it into the composter. That worked okay except that the garbage can was plastic and a squirrel nibbled through the lid to get at whatever it was smelling inside (I never have problems with animals getting into my compost bins in summer or winter, so this was a surprise). 

When I first moved to the city after 10 years in rural Vermont I couldn't get used to throwing out food scraps but we were in a second-floor apartment with no place to put a compost bin on the little balcony. So I spent way too much money and bought a fancy electric indoor composter. The website had all these testimonials from customers saying how great it was and how it didn't smell at all, but ours stank up the place pretty quick every time we opened it up to put stuff in. At the end of the first month I opened the tray in the bottom to pull out my finished compost but all I found was a puddle of putrid black slime. I ended up taking the composter to the dump; I couldn't return it because once you have food in it the composter is considered hazardous waste. Three weeks after I got rid of it, I got a small envelope in the mail from the manufacturer saying that a crucial wire was missing from my composter, and I needed to install it to make it work properly. Too late! A very expensive lesson.


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## hboy43 (May 10, 2009)

Hi:

Not much happens in the winter unless the pile is large enough, such that the core can keep going due to being insulated by all the material around it. I seem to achieve this size, as I empty each and every year around April/May. So without size, one needs enough containers to stockpile all the compost in a frozen state through the winter. Other tips: keep you composter in the sun, and insulate, perhaps with straw bales, which also make excellent mulch the next year.

As far as animals go, you wouldn't think squirrels and chipmunks could make off with an entire apple up a tree, but they can. I find apples all over the place. Good fun. Why do I, the notoriously frugal and tight hboy, have entire apples in the compost you ask? My wife teaches kindergarten. The average 5 year old doesn't eat a whole (or even half) apple, and a good number of them don't eat any of an apple.

hboy43


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## brad (May 22, 2009)

Yeah, in my little bins there's no composting action whatsoever in winter: the whole pile freezes solid. I just add stuff on top throughout the winter and it doesn't start decomposing until the thaw. I usually throw a bit of dirt on top between layers to keep the smell down in early spring, otherwise it can get pretty rank with all that decomposition starting at once. I also turn the pile in the bins as soon as it thaws: mixing is important both to speed the process and to avoid anaerobic conditions that produce lots of methane. In full summer I can have finished compost in little more than a week if I mix it well: I put in a batch of table scraps, mix them in, and one week later they're fully processed. I can usually get at least two or three full bins of finished compost each summer, although my mix tends to be higher in nitrogen than carbon (I don't put in a lot of woody material, mainly because I don't have it -- I use a chipper to process fallen branches but that's about it).


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## Sustainable PF (Nov 5, 2010)

Sure, we compost all winter. It basically becomes frozen food waste until spring.


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## Ponderling (Mar 1, 2013)

Yes, we compost all winter.

We keep an old ice crem bucket in the corner of the counter. Once it is half full we take it out. If the composter lid is frozen, we try again in a few days, when the ice crem bin is almost full. 

I save a bag of leaves in the fall in a garbage bag in the garage, and sprinkle a few inch layer of them on maybe once month. 

The leaves speeds up the action when the spring comes. Otherwise the winter aditions are too wet to be appetizing for the worms.

Native worms in my composter just go dormant in the winter for me here in the GTA.

We had a warm spell over around Chistmas time , and I dug out the compost corkscrew, and yes, the worms were alive and busy in the lower layers. 

The second composter in the back corner of the yard takes wheatever is not finished in the spring from the near back door one. 

By the fall that is finshed in it, and the summer back door load goes to the back corner again to perc away all winter and leave capacity in the back door one.


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## Sasquatch (Jan 28, 2012)

Yeah, we compost all year even though the process stops in the winter.
Doesn't really matter because it'll start up again in the spring.
We also put meat scraps etc. out because our local murder of crows and ravens are watching our compost and promptly clean it up in no time flat. The racoons and coyotes clean up what's left at night.
That's why we only have half a garbage bag to put out every 2 weeks.


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## My Own Advisor (Sep 24, 2012)

No, but we do the green waste thing in Ottawa/Greely winters.


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## RBull (Jan 20, 2013)

Absolutely. In my area we have compost bins that get picked up every 2 weeks year round. We don't use it a lot since we have a large compost pile that we dump things into year round. And with a large property it's a non issue for smell etc.


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## wendi1 (Oct 2, 2013)

Personally, I use the green bin, now, since it takes bones and the like. But if your compost bin is used in the summertime, and is healthy with lots of brown matter (leaves, garden waste), you will get some bacterial action that will keep it warm. Smell comes from anaerobic activity - it will need to be turned if this happens. If you decide to make your own compost bin, you have to make some (small) holes to allow oxygen in - a closed bin will stink. Ottawa gave out a bunch of free composters... I don't know if they still have some, or will.

I certainly don't recommend that you leave it uncovered to attract crows and raccoons.

If it freezes, no biggie, it will start up again in the spring. It's like gravity... it even works on the weekends. There's lots of advice on the internet... but it is not rocket science.


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## dubmac (Jan 9, 2011)

We have a composter and we compost year round. 
We've had some very cold spells here in Vancouver, but our red wigglers are alive and well - all curled up in a big ball in the depths of the composter. I suspect that the heat produced by the bacteria and fungi in the composter raise the temperature enough the keep the red wigglers from freezing - just a kooky theory of mine.


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## Nemo2 (Mar 1, 2012)

We would compost, (it'd reduce our garbage to virtually zero*), year round, but our condo townhouse complex is not thus far included in the local program.

(*This apparently is a concern for the city since it's anticipated that garbage tag revenues will drop off sharply everywhere the Green Bin program is implemented.)


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## brad (May 22, 2009)

Has anyone tried Bokashi composting? See http://bokashicomposting.com for info. It looks like it would work well in winter, and also for households where outdoor composting isn't an option. The folks with the website have turned it into a business, but I imagine it wouldn't be too hard to put together your own system as long as you can get the initial inoculant.


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