Winter Composting

Composting isn’t only a summer garden chore. You can do it all year-round! Decomposition is a bit slower in the colder months, but with some adjustments to your composting routine, you can keep the composting dream alive from fall to spring.

Composting isn’t only a summer garden chore. You can do it all year-round! Decomposition is a bit slower in the colder months, but with some adjustments to your composting routine, you can keep the composting dream alive from fall to spring.

One important ingredient for compost is heat. Wet food scraps plus cold weather will equal a frozen brick of compostables unless you insulate your compost bin. Make an insulating barrier around your bin with hay bales. Stuff leaves in the gaps between the bin and the bales. The insulation won’t keep the bin as hot as a mid-summer day, but it will keep it above freezing.

While you can’t speed up the time it will take for compost to decompose when the weather is a bit cooler, you can keep things moving by making sure the bits that you add to the compost bin are nice and small. This may take a couple extra minutes to chop up potato peels and apple cores, but the return will be worth the time investment. In fact, you can get your time back by skipping on flipping the compost until the weather warms up. Flipping compost in the winter allows valuable heat to escape, so just don’t do it!