Do I add to the compost in the winter?

I am getting conflicting advice about this. I am in zone 4, thus it is freezing now and will thaw off and on until April it will be frozen most of that time. Do I still add vegetable material to the compost bin? I have a black plastic bin.

Will it attract wild critters? Even though we live in the heart of a city we live by a wooded creek where raccoons and fox live. The raccoons visit most nights the fox only on occasion.

The more moisture in the pile, the faster it will freeze. If you keep it a little on the drier side, it won't freeze quite as readily, but in your area it will probably still freeze much of the winter.

I don't compost at all in winter. I just don't want to be out there if I don't have to. ( I don't think I'd live in Minneapolis if someone put a gun to my head. Not offense intended, but I hate snow and cold weather! SW Ohio is bad enough). But many people in cold climates do maintain hot compost in winter.

I have lots of small rodents here- field mice, voles, chipmunks, squirrels, possum) and I just don't compost food. A piece hardware cloth under your bin might help to keep critters out. I have found field mice in mine in cold weather.

Karen

To tell you the truth it almost took a gun to my head to move back here.
I moved away in 1978, in 1999 we moved back with two children in tow that really wanted to live by Grandma and the cousins so here I am. I do like living near my sister and probably won't move for that reason. If I was moving it would be much farther South than Ohio. I love living near the ocean with shorts and tee shirt weather. Somewhere like South America.

Maybe all of the rest of the people up here in the tundra are in hibernation and can't answer the question.

I would think if your bin is "cooking" you should be able to bury the kitchen scraps in there without drawing critters. I went to college in Mpls for 5 years and am from Nebraska orginally (not exactly a hot house either). I've never been so cold in my life and don't care if I never ever see snow again! LOL And it's snowing to beat the band here, right now....LOL I won't be driving with the crazies here today.
It's beautiful country and I loved to hunt and fish with one of my roommates and her dad. We had wonderful fun, but enough is enough.
Both my sons are VA born and bred and are fascinated of my pics of flatbed railroad cars loaded with snow going south.....LOL

zenpotter- I don't feel qualified to offer an opinion, except that I don't really think vegetables would be all that tempting to raccoons and fox. I add to mine all year. The freeze would turn the veggies into mush pretty fast I think.

doccat? I am naive? explain the snow RR please

Sallyg, did you hit your head on the dumpster again, honey? LOL
Actually, in Mpls when it snows, it SNOWS....feets and feets of the stuff. They use to push the uncontaminated snow into the river(this was in the 70s so that may have changed) pile huge drifts of snow on empty areas and extra got loaded on flat rail cars and shipped south, melting on the way. It was pretty neat. I'll dig around and see if I can find the pictures, run em on the scanner. It was amazing to me and trust me, Nebraska gets plenty of snow too, but not like that! I left there in Dec of 70. It was an unusually bad winter even for that area, but there was 50 inches of snow on the ground level. It started snowing in the middle of the night and by the time we left about 7:00am there was an additional 5 inches on the ground. I could walk right out the front door of my townhouse on to the snow bank. Weird! It was bad enough even the plows couldn't run. You could not get thru the short cut that goes between Sioux City, NE and IW. The plows couldn't keep it open. When they can't run, you got major trouble, cause up there when it starts to snow the plows roll.

I lived in Mpls from 1947 when I was born until 1967 and then in Northern MN until 78 and never saw snow on railroad cars. Where in Mpls did you live? It would be interesting to see the photos. We don't get snow like that anymore. Global warming has taken care of that. Duluth got 17" yesterday because of the lake effect, but nowhere else got that much.

We did get 12" in 1999 the year we moved back, but that was the last big snow in Mpls. Now they pile it up on the edges of parking lots or bare land and let it melt. On the city streets it just goes to the side of the road.

The raccoons and fox don't bother it in the summer so unless they get mighty hungry they probably won't in the winter. In the past I have just not added to it, but I was wondering what would happen if I did.

I will hunt for the pics, they may be in storage, I don't remember, but I'll check my pic stash.

Thanks.

thanks doccat. I've never seen that. born and raised Maryland, land of the flurry wimps. It is 30 degrees right now, 2 to 3 inches snow to be on the ground by 3:00 and schools all over central MD are closing two hours early.

It's snow hard here, not much accumulation as yet. It's pretty "fluffy" I doubt it will stick. But no doubt we will not be able of find a loaf of bread, jug of milk or toilet paper in a 100 mile radius. You'd think we were going to be locked down for weeks.......sigh

I think the difference is we know how to drive in snow so we don't feel a need to go out and stock up.

Yet if you can hold out til tomorrow AM the store will be crammed with milk and nobody to buy it. They forget to tell the cows about the change in schedule!

so, zen, you may have a nice extensive experiment going by spring thaw, on the life cycle of various molds and rot organisms.

Yeah zen, I know how to drive in snow, most of these fools do not. Scary. One of my favorite things to give at a bridal shower is an emergency winter kit with directions on how to use it. I include dry milk, canned goods, candles and holders, kitchen matches, a kerosene lantern, instant soup, and recipes on bread making, slow cooker stuff, a couple of different size flashlights and batteries in different sizesk, etc...I got some strange looks at first, but it was a real hit once I explained.
My mother always had an "winter" kit that I was responsible for checking. Just to make sure everything was fresh, etc. All though this area is getting more and more urbanized it does not mean we don't have power outages etc.

sally, I can't help but wonder if they will rot when they will be frozen most of the time. I put some in this morning I will see what happens before I add any more.

zen: Put some lettuce in the freezer. The result would be similar to what you'd see after freezing in the compost.

Karen

Good thinking. It would decompose fast in the spring. It also might smell for awhile if there was a lot of it.

It shouldn't smell it you bury in the pile. Is your pile cooking?

It is now, but as it gets colder it stops. We get temperatures as low as -25º,

Yeah, I know, I lived there for 5 years. You should still have some heat in the middle of the pile. You might have to break thru the top layer to get to it, but you should be able to bury your scraps on there and let it keep working.

Sounds good. Thanks

Not as cold here in PA, but it's been in the low 30's to high 20's over the last two weeks. Checked my pile this morning, although the outer layer was frosty, it was hot and steamy in the center. I plan to compost all winter with kitchen scraps, coffee grinds (25-30 lbs from Starbucks weekly) and dried leaves. I'm hoping the piles at least stay warm.

Welcome back, Michaeljo........and yeah they will as long as you keep feeding them. The internal temp of those piles have nothing to do with the outside temp. Other than being slowed down a bit by the interchange of air. Thats a biochemical change taking place in the pile. Good stuff come spring :)

I think I will keep adding to mine then.

Do it zenpotter, it's not going to hurt anything and it will help you get more final product. :)

I don't even know what winter is here, so I can just compost all the time!!!
It was 32 % two nights ago and 80 today!!

I've found a problem with my compost tumbler. When it is covered in a half inch or more of ice, I cannot open it. Hurry up spring!