How to Extend YOUR Compost Making Season

Just because the weather has turned cold, doesn’t mean you have to stop your compost making efforts. Your kitchen refuse is still going to pile up so you need a system to extend your compost season as long as possible.

Here are a couple of ways on how to compost during the colder months:

Compost Tumbler System:

Keep a compost container, such as a compost crock or compost pail, in your kitchen and collect your kitchen refuse every day like normal.  when the compost crock or compost pail becomes full, transfer the refuse to a Back Porch Compost Tumbler, similar to the one pictured below.

These compost tumblers are small in size, measuring just 37″ high x 31″ wide x 26″ deep, weigh just 40 pounds, and sit on 6″ wheels, which makes them easy to move around.  You can easily keep it on your back porch, patio, balcony, or laundry room.

In one of these locations, it shouldn’t freeze and will continue to convert your garbage into useful organic compost.  If, for some reason, your compost doesn’t get hot enough, you can always add a compost activator to get things perking along.

The Bokashi System:

Another alternative is to use the Bokashi system in your kitchen, such as the ones made by All Seasons Indoor Composters.  With this system, you alternate your kitchen refuse – all of it – in an air-tight bucket with layers of a medium, such as wheat bran, which has been inoculated with effective microorganisms. This mixture basically “pickles” your garbage in 10 days to two weeks. It’s usually good to have two buckets and alternate them.  When one is full, you switch to the next.  By the time the contents on the first bucket have ‘pickled’, the second bucket is full.
When the contents are ready, you can put them in your back porch compost tumbler with the rest of your compost and proceed as normal.  If it’s still possible, you can alternately bury the pickled mixture directly in your yard and it will be ready for your garden by Spring.

A Word of Caution

Before you begin putting the contents of your compost crock, pail, or bokashi bucket into your back yard compost tumbler, the tumbler must already have a small amount of “normal” compost to interact with the refuse from your kitchen containers. A good mixture would be green and brown organic matter and a little dirt, just like you would use when you are starting a normal compost pile in your back yard.

Whichever system you chose, compost crocks or pails, or the Bokashi system, used with your Back Porch Compost Tumbler, you can effectively extend your compost making system throughout the colder months.