Whole tomatoes will eventually compost, but the green ones are pretty tough in cool weather, so stomping them will help the process. The seeds are likely to survive the process unless the compost gets really hot, so you may see volunteer tomato plants next year. In my experience, cherry tomatoes that grow from volunteers are pretty good, but others tend to be oddly shaped.

I usually only see worms in my compost when it starts getting cold. Pill bugs are ok, too. Slugs are bad. Slugs may be ok from the standpoint of the composting process, but I consider them slimy disgusting creatures and don't like them. At all.

I've been putting whole pumpkins in my compost piles. Do you think I'll get volunteer pumpkins next year?

If the compost pile gets hot enough to kill the seeds, you won't get volunteers. But in zone 4, it's likely that your compost piles with pumpkins will be slow composting in the winter, so you'll likely get volunteers. They're actually fairly likely to bear decent pumpkins, though, so you can always let a few grow.

The average home compost pile....no matter whether in Florida....or in Juneau....does not heat up sufficient to kill most seeds.

Now, like us humans, there are seeds....and there are seeds.
Whole pumpkins....everything, pulp, shell and seeds, can go into the compost pile and will add much to the mix.

Tomatoes seeds:
Visit a community waste center and maybe they'll let you take some of the stuff for your garden.
But..watch out.....there's tomato seeds in there, big juicey ones. No pumpkins though, they composted down in short order.

As for pumpkin seed; in Zn 4, it may get cold enough to kill them. Tomatoes will survive freezing though

Happyday,

We planted pumpkins in one spot on our property this year which grew but did not produce. Late June we noticed some pumpkins growing in a holding bed which we had thrown compost on ,and by fall we had beautiful pumpkins. Here's a picture of the sunflower volunteers and pumpkins growing together...

{{gwi:317831}}

Usually I don't get volunteer pumpkins since the piles are still heating up at this time to over 130F. Tomatoe seeds need a higher temperature though. That's my experience.

Today I turned over a pile and found many many pumpkin sprouts in the outer edges. Our Thanksgiving is mid-October, so the pumpkins go in the compost right after Halloween.

I put whole tomatoes, peppers, pumpkins and other leftover vegetable garden stuff into my bins every year. I get volunteers all the time but they usually stop volunteering after they have been turned over a few times.

I also alternate between a few bins so I give the compost plenty of time to decompose. Sometimes over a year. If I needed it quicker, I'd probably get a tumbler or only add veggies that I put in the blender first.

ant

My compost gets over 150 for several days, but my "lazy piles" on the garden often don't. I have volunteer tomatoes everywhere.

Green toms may or may not have mature enough seeds- but they're usually pretty hardy.