How to compost in the winter. With browns that include straw newspaper and dead leaves. Use one layer of dirt for each foot of leaves. Keep carbon ingredients such as straw or autumn leaves near your composter and layer.
You can lay down leaves newspapers sawdust or shredded cardboard. Pile straw or hay bales around your bin or packed leaf bags. The pile should be about 4ft in diameter and 3ft deep.
Along with vegetables including pumpkin shells and onion skins. This will ensure that all of the beneficial critters in the compost will stay toasty all winter long. Along with tea leaves and tea bags without staples or stickers.
Use them during the winter as a brown layer in between green kitchen refuse. Include kitchen scraps such as fruit peels rinds and cores. To start a leaf compost pile gather together the leaves and layer with dirt.
Lay down brown materials on the ground where you want to compost. Most compost piles that are less than one cubic yard in volume will tend to freeze solid and they dont have a. Strategies for success despite the cold.
The contents of your winter composting collection can be the same throughout the year. Thats where youll pour kitchen scraps into the pile. Pull leaves from around the sides of the heap and add to the hole after adding green waste to make for good green brown layering.
The best compost piles layer green kitchen scraps fresh garden waste etc. In the winter you need to make sure your compost pile isnt too big or too small. You may have noticed that the car in the garage or in the carport tends to be less frost ridden.
Collect leaves in the fall and store under cover for composting use throughout winter. Control external environmental factors by protecting your compost pile from. When the ground freezes start to tuck kitchen scraps under the cover of the brown materials.
Managing compost over winter. Coffee grounds and paper filters can also go in the compost. Whether your compost pile is new or established reserve extra leaves in a separate pile or in a bag next to your compost bin.
Larger compost piles perform better than smaller ones during the winter months because even if the outer layers are frozen through there may still be some decomposition going on in the center. As the university of wisconsin extension suggests in its piece on winter composting leave a hole in the leaf cover at the top of the heap. This is because bigger compost piles tend to be self insulating with the outer layers protecting the inner ones.
The same concept for managing your winter compost heap applies as any other time with layers of browns and greens.