As I threw a bunch of wilted greens on my frozen, snow covered compost heap this morning, it occurred to me that I must be doing this wrong. These greens are going to blow away or join the rodent-chewed, sagging gourds that I tossed on once it was time to transition from harvest time to christmas decor inside. So I did some research on how to compost in winter and here's what I found.
- This is a good summary of an article from Organic Gardening courtesy of EnviroMom: How to Compost in the Depths of Winter. Key points: chop and shred your browns and greens, keep pile damp, don't turn it! I'm defnitely not out there turning my heap over so I get points for that!
- Winter Composting Tips from the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources by Vicky Viens. From the winter composting strategies she lists, I guess I would fall into "build your pile", since I continue to toss our kitchen organics on there, and little else. She mentions several other tips for people who keep a compost bin, and goes on to suggest bringing a bin inside and enriching it with worms, "Worms eat more than one-half their weight daily and produce excellent compost." I am not interested in bringing a worm bin indoors at this point. Too risky.
- I like this tip from (link is a PDF) The Cornell Cooperative Extension: "One common mistake [when composting] is to pile all the winter's kitchen scraps onto your pile without layering or mixing in browns. All-green piles are almost always stinky! If your pile is excessively wet due to the spring thaw, turn it and add more browns to soak up this moisture."
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