First year composting and I'm somewhere with real winters, snow cover from November to March and the pile frozen solid for a good chunk of it. Started the pile in June, it's now a dark crumbly mass with recognisable eggshells and a few stubborn twigs. Is this usable, and what's a realistic timeline in a climate where the pile spends nearly half the year frozen?
Dark and crumbly with eggshells and twigs still visible is finished for practical purposes. Eggshells take years and mean nothing. Twigs you screen out with a bit of chicken wire over a wheelbarrow and throw back in the next pile as structure.
Realistic timeline where the pile freezes: about 12-18 months from build to use if you're not managing it hard, versus 4-6 months in a mild climate. The frozen months are simply a pause, not a loss — the pile picks up in spring roughly where it left off. Freeze-thaw cycles actually help by rupturing plant cells, so material often breaks down faster in the first weeks of spring than it did in autumn.
Smell test beats looks: finished compost smells like woodland floor. If it still smells sour or sweet, give it another month.
Smells exactly like the woods behind my parents' place. Screening it this weekend.
A 12mm mesh over a barrow is the standard, and the oversize going back into the next pile is the best inoculant you can add — it's already full of the right organisms.
Also plan for winter storage of scraps. Everyone's plan collapses in January when the path to the pile is under snow and it's dark at 4pm. A lidded bucket in an unheated porch freezes solid, which is fine and odourless, and you tip the whole frozen block into the pile in March.
Don't over-worry about "finished". Slightly immature compost is fine as a mulch on top of beds, it just shouldn't be mixed heavily into soil where you're about to sow seeds. Spread it, let the worms finish the job in place.
@drainfield_dave · last yr. · 2 replies
Practical cold climate advice: build big and build in autumn. A pile under about a cubic metre freezes right through and stays frozen. Insulate the outside with bagged leaves or straw bales and a decent core will keep working down to well below freezing air temperatures, sometimes into January.
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@tiny_steps_tam · last yr.
Straw bales around the outside is such an obvious idea and I'd never seen it mentioned. Doing that this year.
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