far north composting?
far north composting?
i live in alaska and i've started doing some very slapdash lazy composting. i bought a wire pet pen off amazon for $35ish that comes in 8 panels, and then i split that into two 4 panel segments, and then i staked & zip tied them behind my shed to form two wire boxes and i've been tossing yard & kitchen veg waste in there willy nilly. the advice i got was it's tough to compost here properly because of the 6 months of winter, so just put everything in a pile and cover the top when the snow comes, and then next year when it thaws, dig it out and use it.
i'm thinking about starting a small indoor worm farm this fall to handle kitchen waste in the winter months, instead of having to shovel a path to the compost bins.
i have a large raised garden bed and i think the lady who had the place before us just put her kitchen waste in the corner of the bed. there's a lot of happy worms in the soil.
anyone got any tips for composting options in northern latitudes?
While I don't have hands-on experience with such a cold climate, two things popped in my head. First, maybe you are better off with one big pile. More volume means the heap will be able to keep higher temperatures. The snow on the cover might actually be a very good insulator as well. Second, and this might be the number-nerd in me, but I'd actually track the temperature with a compost thermometer. I guess you won't be turning the pile often, and for sure not in winter when it's covered in snow, but that way you can keep track of what your pile is doing.
I hope someone has better, actual practical tips for you, but keep us updated on this one!
thanks! good thoughts. yes, definitely looking at how i can change/improve the pile(s).
I am also a numbers person @drk. Do you know any small, low cost, wireless thermometer to keep track during the year?
I would like to know how cold/warm my shed / isolated places is. Also to understand if batteries can survive etc. A bit of DIY is not a problem and a server is setup easily here.
I was never that far north, but in New England our crude compost heap (no bin, just a pile on the ground) stayed warm enough under feet of snow, that in the spring I turned it over and discovered it had doubled as a very toasty little mouse nest full of baby mice. So that's something.
For indoor options, bokashi or another fermentation-based approach might be the way to go. Ferment the food scraps to get the bacterial activity going, then feed them to the worms?
Second the bokashi method. As a composter in Minnesota, we stay pretty cold for quite a long time. I swapped to bokashi in my basement and ferment a ton over the winter. Once its finished, I dump it into a large container outside to freeze for the winter, and in the spring either direct bury into my garden beds that like a huge dose of fertilization, or put it into my hot pile to jumpstart for the spring (it heats up a pile sooooo fast).
I personally don't feed bokashi to my worms because
- it stinks (normally its sealed in an air-tight bucket so you can't smell it... feeding it to worms exposes it)
- the worms can't eat that volume (bokashi can ferment anything, so everything goes in; meat, dairy, citrus, etc. Between my wife and I we ended the winter with over 30 gallons of very finely chopped material fermented... which was probably 100+ pounds in total)
- the worms don't like the acidity. Bokashi is anaerobic fermentation, which produces acidic compounds, and it takes ages to adjust your worms to that PH and going slightly too heavy on a feeding can cause a mass worm escape, since the acid will absorb and distribute throughout the soil (they can't really escape by just balling in a corner)
I have heard of people using old chest freezers for their compost. Not sure how easy it is to find such a thing, or how much extra composting time that'll get you. You could try making something similar with rigid insulation.
I live in Scotland, so no where near that cold or much snow. But making sure it's got the minerals to keep microbial growth going should help it generate it's own heat. We can buy a product called rock dust here, it's ground up volcanic basalt - side product of quarrying - wide range of minerals in it. Mixing some through before covering it should help.
Another thing that gets it cooking is wood ash, needs to be a pure wood fire obviously. You can also go the extra step and make biochar to mix in - you'll get some ash with that anyway.
If you live near the coast a bit seaweed is a good addition too.
I try to turn my own compost regularly and it's gratifying to see the steam rising on a cold day 😁