Keep Composting All Winter!

Polar vortex or not, winter can be a challenging time to compost. Whether you’re dealing with frozen compost or wading through hip-deep snow to your bin, many Manitobans feel discouraged when it comes to keeping up with the composting year-round. But fear not, this is your demystifying guide to winter composting – yes, even in -30˚C! Here are a few of common things that people ask about when it comes to winter composting:

Will the Food Attract Animals?

There is no reason to cover the food scraps with leaves in the dead of winter because they will freeze very quickly and create little if any odour to attract animals. With smaller store-bought bins keep the lid on tightly and once the warmer weather arrives you can cover the food waste with some leaves or other brown materials. If you have a larger compost pile in your yard, save a few bags of leaves from your fall raking to cover food periodically throughout the winter or in the spring when things start to thaw.

I Don’t Like Walking to the Bin, What are My Options?

If you have a small store-bought bin, you can place it in a convenient place close to the house so you don’t have to trudge through the snow to get to it. You can also consider using a 5 gallon pail or similar container to store your food scraps and make your trips to the compost when it is full. This way you can even pick a milder day to empty the compost. Keep the container in your garage or similar cold space with a lid on it and make far fewer trips to the compost pile in the cold.

What if My Compost Bin Fills Up?

If you harvest in the fall or if you have a larger compost pile, it is not likely that you will have this problem. With the colder temperatures, everything that you add will freeze so there is no reason to add extra leaves or browns, which can fill your bin quickly. If it does fill up, you can always store compostable items in a separate container (pail or garbage can) and place the contents in the bin once things start to thaw in the spring.

Indoor Options

Do cold temperatures send you shivering indoors with a blanket, hot cocoa (or mulled cider), and a big dose of denial until spring? Then vermicomposting or Bokashi composting might be for you!

Vermicomposting

This nifty compost method involves a bin (you can purchase one or make one yourself out of two Rubbermaid containers), and some special worms called red wriggler, or Eisinia Fetida. Some shredded paper or coconut coir, dampened, makes a perfect bedding for the worms, which you then feed fruit and vegetable scraps. They can consume approximately half their body weight in food scraps per week, and their population will grow or shrink to accommodate how much you feed them. 

Bokashi Composting

Bo-who? Bokashi isn’t technically a composting method, but rather a way of fermenting your food scraps to produce pre-compost which will break down quickly in your garden come spring. There’s plenty of online tutorials on how to do this. The bonus? Unlike vermicomposting, you can include meat and bones because the acidity of the fermenting kills off pathogens. Because you keep it lidded, it keeps for quite a while and doesn’t smell. The downside is that the finished product isn’t actually compost, and there can be some cost to keeping yourself supplied with the Bokashi mix (a mixture of beneficial micro-organisms and bran). 

Pay Someone Else to Do It For You!

If you have meat and dairy scraps, if you find compost icky, or hate venturing out into the cold, Compost Winnipeg might be your answer. This social enterprise will take meat, dairy, oils, napkins, bones, and food-soiled paper, on top of your usual fruit and vegetable scraps (you’ll still have to find your own solution for pet waste though). Contact info@compostwinnipeg.ca for pricing and to see if we’re serving your neighbourhood.

Use Somebody Else’s Bin

In a few neighbourhoods, there are community compost bins run by community gardens or community associations. These bins can accept plant-based waste only, so keep the meat, dairy, bones, and oil out! This is a good option if you don’t mind carrying your bin over and if you have a smaller amount of compost to dump – some of the sites can fill up as many people use them through the winter.

In the end, there’s no reason why you can’t continue using your backyard bin in the winter. Got questions? Comments? Comment below or shoot us an email at compost@greenactioncentre.ca