Depending on where you live, sometimes things just freeze over or slow down. I'm having this same kind of problem.

I'm hoping Lloyd will see this and give you a hand. He is a hard core composter! :)

Kim

Sweet!! Lloyd....where are you?
I live north of Nashville Tennessee. It's been colder and snowier here than normal this year. My grandma was a hard core composter, but as a small child, I was just asked to take stuff out to the compost pile. I wish I had been more inquisitive and asked her lots of questions because she was a master gardener. She passed away when I was still young. Now that I am older, I would love to have the opportunity to pick her brain.

I'm kinda interested in the plant that committed suicide...How exactly does a plant do that? ;-)

Tumblers in cool/cold weather do not retain heat very well at all. Heat loss, is greater than the heat generated, (especially in a small unit) ergo they have a tough time staying warm and often, only the very centre can stay a bit warm. Up here on the arctic tundra, tumblers freeze solid. There is a company in Finland or Sweden that makes an insulted tumbler that seems to be suited to colder climate. I'm kinda chagrined that us Canucks didn't invent that. :-(

Piles on the ground have some insulation effect being on the ground so the internal warm area is usually larger but even in extreme cold they have a tough time retaining heat. I think Tiffy over in Nova Scotia uses purloined bales as insulation so it can be done.

Your ingredients are generally okay but I'd leave out the soil myself. I recall someone on here talking about placing a hot water bottle or something like that in their compost to help it keep warm overnight. I'm sure that a true whacko enthusiast would consider using body heat but that thought never crossed my mind. I have thought of wrapping some old carpeting around a tumbler but never did it (DW said I couldn't have the wool area rug, why are women so unreasonable? I said I'd bring it back in the summer!).

My advice for now, wait for warmer weather, drink plenty of fluids, cut back on the salt, eat more fruits/veggies and go bowling!

Lloyd

P.S. Yay Gramma, sounds like she was my kinda person. I enjoy talking to the oldtimers, more down to earth so to speak. We don't know what we got till it's gone. :-(

Hi Lloyd,
Wonder if my ten year old is up camping in the compost...hmmm...no, think it'll be the punishment for the teenager instead...he's bigger, more surface area to heat the pile....LOL

I don't know why women are so unreasonable, being one, I'm eyeballing my carpet as we speak. I think I'm going to fit in pretty good with the people on this forum, you guys are great.

I'm certain you would have liked my Grandma, she had the biggest compost pile I have ever seen, and she vermicomposted as well. My granddad used to cuss every time he mowed the yard because he had to mow around so many different garden beds. I think she could grow something from a ten year old dead stick, just amazing to me.

My suicidal plant, whom i babied for months on end, was a Maranta leuconeura. I had it on a pebble tray to up the humidity, moved it into the bathroom because the teenagers shower all the time, better humidity. It was very happy in it's new surroundings, or seemed to be, and it jumped off the counter, fell on it's top, broke every leafstalk, and never recovered. My children all swore they had no idea how it happened, and suggested that the plant just didn't like me because I had killed so many of it's relatives. It has been known as the suicidal plant around here ever since. I'm pretty sure that what actually killed the plants was the damage to the roots done by the breaking pot. I now have one successfully growing in a self-watering pot and it is very happy and healthy and chained to the windowsill to prevent suicide. My daughter suggested that I feed it xanax to help it relax around me and want to live. Thanks for the input. I think I will try insulating my bin this weekend, never liked this carpet anyway.

Norma

Sheaviance1: "I think it is natural that composting follows gardening fairly quickly."

Absolutely, though sometimes it's the other way around!

I have no trouble getting my piles to heat back up from the 60's up to 130 degrees when I turn them. I use wooden pallets to make bins but even the windrow heats up in the middle. Overnight temps were into the 20's. At one point last month the ground was frozen.

When I remember, I try to line my bins with cardboard and cover them with old leaf bags to hold in the water vapor and heat.

Hello, I wonder if you could save the carpets and try the blankets you buy at the hardware stores for your hot water heater? The come in different sizes and have zippers for easy access? Just a thought Frogged

Many of us in the colder areas of the world can find composting in winter a challange because if compost is too wet it will freeze. This winter warmer, up here, than normal allows the bacteria in my compost pile to continue working, evidenced by the heat being generated internally and the size of the pile that started this fall at 4 feet high is now, even with additions, down to 2-1/2 feet.
If you provide just enough moisture to the mixture, along with the right ratio of everything else and the volume is fairly close to good, your compost pile should function even at this time of year.

"... if compost is too wet it will freeze."

Being in one of the coldest winter climates around I'm pretty confident this is a load of malarkey.

Compost can freeze when the heat generated is insufficient to offset the heat lost and the temperature falls far enough below the freezing point. Extremely low ambient temperatures, windchill and other factors can cause the heat loss to increase to the point where the organisms can no longer function even in a perfect compost pile. I've had the medium tumbler cooking away at 150 in the fall, freeze solid in the winter and go back up to 130ish in the spring. No water added nor subtracted.

Yes, being outside of the 'ranges' for optimum heat generation can influence the speed at which a pile or tumbler will cool down but to say it is always caused by only one parameter being 'out of tolerance' is not accurate.

Lloyd

P.S. Our daytime temperatures are often -20C for several days in a row with windchill below -40C. We know cold. We also know it's good to stay indoors (preferably at the bowling centre) when it's really cold.

Two days of 55+ degree weather and my compost is cooking away!!! Whoohoo!!

You da Man!!

(you know what I mean)

Lloyd