Starting compost in the winter

Get ready, because I have a lot of mistakes to share! I ended up with a pretty good end result, but made a lot of mistakes on the way. I'll also be keeping this post updated as the weather warms up and the compost progresses!

We bought the house in January, which is not a great time to get into gardening. But I wanted to at least get some compost started, to reduce waste and prepare for spring. Compost bins that you can buy online can cost hundreds of dollars, which blew my mind because they seemed like really simple plastic containers. (Although, I suppose it's fair. Tumblers need to be pretty sturdy.)

One such expensive compost system is the Subpod. It's a $200 plastic crate that goes into the ground, and it mainly uses compost worms to break down your food scraps. I came pretty close to buying one, but then my boyfriend shamed me for spending that much money on such a simple looking thing.

The main things that interested me about the Subpod were its claims of how fast it could break down food due to the use of worms, and the fact that since the container is in the ground and has holes for the worms to travel through, odor/pests are reduced, and the worms are free to move outside the bin and aerate and fertilize the surrounding soil. 

The worms being the main selling point, I then looked into DIY worm bins. I found a tutorial for a 5 gallon bucket worm bin and decided to start small with that. 

We found a bucket in the basement and Isaac drilled a bunch of holes in the sides and bottom. He also dug a hole in the yard that would fit most of the bucket, which he says was actually a huge workout because we only had a tiny hand spade to shovel with. 

We filled in the bottom with some twigs and dried leaves leftover from the fall. A loose layer of carbon is supposed to make sure liquids can drain out and the conditions in the bucket remain aerobic. Anaerobic decomposition is what makes everything smell rotten. 

Then we put in a bunch of food scraps and covered them with shredded paper bags. Covering the food scraps with carbon helps reduce smell, which ensures we don't attract pests. Also, all the holes in the bucket end up below ground level, which reduces smell as well. We put the lid on top and weighed it down with a big rock to prevent animals from getting in.

Time for the worms. I got 500 worms for something like $30 online and they showed up in the mail in great condition. Worms can't survive sub-freezing temperatures, but compost supposedly generates heat as it decomposes, and being underground is somewhat insulating, so I was optimistic.

I was too optimistic.

A large compost pile in full swing generates heat, yes. But a cold bucket of brand new food scraps does not. I was too excited to put the worm in, and dumped them into said cold bucket. That night, temperatures dipped below freezing, and I unintentionally murdered all 500 worms :(

Because of the cold weather, I should have at least started the bin indoors, if not kept it inside for the whole winter. Realizing my mistake too late, I brought the bucket in anyway, nesting it in another bucket to cover the holes and catch any leaking liquid. Worm cocoons can survive freezing temperatures, so maybe there was still hope?

Apparently it takes 6-8 weeks for worm cocoons to hatch (if there even were any to begin with), and before I could reach that point, the basement where I was keeping the bin started to smell strongly of mold and bother me when I was down there. So that was a big nope, and I immediately moved it to the cold garage to put a pause on it.

After all those failures, I figured I should stop trying to be fancy with the worms and do the most basic compost possible: throwing things in a heap in your backyard and letting nature do its thing.

One of my neighbors happened to be throwing out this odd 2' x 2' table. It's very sturdy and heavy, but generally looks pretty rough. The top was made of plywood which was already wet and delaminating, and the legs were uneven. Also, if it was a table, it was a pretty weirdly designed table. Honestly, it looks more like a small cage?? Because it looked in such rough shape, I didn't feel bad at all taking it to fill with trash in my backyard.

I removed the top (dealing with some deeply buried and very stripped screws), and staple-gunned some 1/4" wire mesh along the sides and bottom of the box. 1/4" is apparently the recommended screen size to keep rodents and other small animals out. It's necessary to do the bottom as well, to prevent them from burrowing in. The table top is heavy enough to just place on top to prevent animals from getting in. It also helps make sure snow and rain doesn't accumulate in the box. 

Mistake #2: I was too cheap to buy a staple gun ($20) and a roll of this wire mesh ($35). So I bought some cheap craft-quality chicken wire on Amazon and tried to duct tape it onto the wood frame. Not only was there not even enough wire to cover everything (oops, don't forget to take measurements, this was 20 sq ft I needed to cover), but duct tape doesn't work great on stiff wire and the damp conditions found outside.

So in the end, I spent $55 on materials and tools to make this compost bin, but $20 of that was for a staple/nail gun that can be used again. I also have over half of the wire mesh remaining. This does not include the $30 of worms that I immediately murdered 🙃

So far though, things have been going okay with the new bin. Since I put the bin outside, it's been below freezing almost every day outside, so not a lot of decomposing has been happening. However, the constant freezing, thawing, and re-freezing of the food scraps helps mechanically break down the food scraps, so that when spring comes, they will decompose faster.

We have a little compost pail in the kitchen with a carbon filter (to prevent smells and flies) that we put food scraps in throughout the week. It's usually full by the end of the week, along with a stash of some brown material: at least one 18-egg cardboard carton due to the amount of eggs we eat, and some other miscellaneous cardboard or paper bags. At the end of the week, I go outside, give the compost a good mix, dig a little hole in the middle, and add the food scraps. Then I cover up with the torn brown material. I haven't been watering the compost, since I don't want the whole thing to freeze into a solid block.

Looking forward to spring when the food scraps will thaw for good and finally start decomposing. Will keep this updated!

Update 2/27: Since starting the compost, our trash volume has gone way down. We went two weeks without taking out the kitchen trash (and it doesn't smell either, since there's no food in it)! It felt so good on trash day to bring the recycling to the curb but not the trash. 

It's also been above freezing for about a week now, and the snow has been melting away. The bottom of the compost pile used to be frozen solid, but I was able to break it up and give everything a good mix. There's definitely been some decomposing going on, and the stuff I put in is browner than it once was. We also have a bunny that visits our yard every day, and so far I haven't seen any signs of it making its way inside the bin. The compost has an earthy smell when I stir it up, but once it's covered up again it's fine.