How to Prepare your Backyard Composter for Overwintering

 

IF you have one of these black plastic composting bins in your backyard, follow these 8 easy steps:

Tip it over!

Separate the decomposed from the non-decomposed contents... (pretty easy: the stuff on top is not decomposed, the stuff at the very bottom usually is)

Put the excellent FINISHED compost onto a plant or tree that would really appreciate a vitamin boost before the cold. I put ours along the new raspberry canes. They are now happy and ready for the Polar Vortex.

Dig a slight hole in another location IN your garden slightly larger than the bottom of the plastic composter; directly in the soil. Think of where the soil needs to be improved, and where water is desired. Choose that spot (My witch hazel shrub is thirsty and needs some support because our chickens have been digging too vigorously near it. That was my decision. Be intentional. Think about what and where is the best place to put it.) *Also, you need to be able to walk to it easily from the kitchen, in the snow, even in your slippers, ya'al. 

Reposition the now-empty composter into the new location, new hole. This ensures that the material you want to compost is in direct contact with the soil bacteria and worms. 

Add some of those fabulous fallen autumn leaves. Lots of them. They are full of carbon.

 

 

FullLeafLitter

 

 

 

 

 

Take the top stuff from your old compost arrangement (it won't be decomposed yet) and shovel it into the bottom of the new location. Add a few big buckets of water. Nothing happens unless there is a wet base to your composter-soil margin. The worms come up out of the soil for water.

Shovel soil around the bottom of it to sort of seal the bottom. Not a big deal. Just enough to keep the unwanted critters from digging into the composter. Tamp it down.

Start to put your new kitchen waste there, now.  Kitchen waste is full of nitrogen. Layer with the leaves! Compost will happen. Even in winter!

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