COLUMNIST: ELI APPLEBY-DONALD
As a gardening enthusiast in the online sphere, I could easily make this article about answering the top ten composting questions I receive from viewers, however, I want to focus on one very Scottish question: how do I keep my compost pile going in the cold and wet of a Scottish winter?
Composting works in two ways: cold and hot. Or to put it into more simple terms: slow or fast. The hotter you can keep your compost pile, the faster that pile will turn your garden and kitchen waste into lovely, crumbly compost.
Composting enthusiasts might worry about the cold weather affecting that hot composting action, but our wet weather can put a damper on things even on our best summer days.
The easiest, simplest, cheapest way to make your own compost is to just make a big pile of your garden and kitchen waste at the bottom of the garden. Literally, just pile it high and let it work its natural magic.
No matter though how well you have kept on top of the ratio of brown to greens, and regardless of what our favourite gardening celebrities from south of the border tell us about hosing down our pile to stop it drying out, the Scottish climate will at times turn that lovely, hot pile into a cold, wet mess. Too much moisture is a killer for hot composting as it quickly turns your compost pile anaerobic.
So find a way to shelter your compost from the rain. A simple cover of old carpet is the most well-known way, or you could use a large tarpaulin and fix it down with some tent pegs. Regardless of how you do it, finding a way to keep the rain out of your compost pile, especially in the wetter, colder months, will go a long way to keeping your pile active.
I often recommend turning a compost pile to reactivate those good bacteria and help get it back on track. That infusion of oxygen can work wonders and in no time, you have a steaming pile once again.
In winter, however, I contradict myself. If you can, try to avoid disturbing the compost. Every time you open that pile, you expose the warmer insides to the cold and allow some of that heat you are trying to maintain to escape. It is better to leave the compost undisturbed until the spring thaws come and there is enough warmth in the air to stop a sudden cold shock at the heart of your compost pile.
For many of us, the number one reason that composting in winter is more difficult is simply the lack of garden waste to feed your pile. You will still no doubt have plenty of kitchen waste, but you may find it more difficult to gather enough woody or brown material, and even when you do have kitchen waste, which is mostly green, you may find you just do not have enough to generate the heat your compost heap would like.
For this reason, it is so much more important to ensure that any waste you add to your compost pile is chopped up very small, if not shredded: the smaller the better.
Smaller pieces of garden waste break down and generate heat much quicker than larger pieces, some of which can take a year or more to fully break down. Adding smaller pieces allows the temperature to rise faster, which in winter, reduces the chance of the general temperatures fighting against your efforts.
A great way to beat the cold is to add insulation to your compost pile. This can help prevent the loss of heat from your compost as well as provide much-needed shelter from the elements, including cold rain.
You can really get creative when adding insulating layers, the key element being that you shelter the compost from wind, and protect it from rain and snow, as well as protecting it from the colder temperatures.
You could try surrounding your compost pile with those bags of leaves you collected over autumn, tucking them into a tight wall around the compost, or even if you have bales of hay, it does exactly the same job.
A simple solution may be to build a bay around your pile using a thick layer of cardboard which has the added benefit of being a great brown addition come warmer weather. If you are more DIY-minded you could add sheets of thick insulating material to some old wooden pallets and build your compost bay from them.
Lastly, you might find that try as you might, you just cannot keep that compost pile warm. In this case, do not give in and stop adding to your pile. The composting action will not actually stop until the centre of your pile freezes, it will simply slow down.
Keep adding green and brown waste as normal, knowing that even if they do not break down as quickly as you might like, the cold, and potentially freezing weather, will keep them from becoming a rotting mess as long as the rain is kept off, and they will soon break down once your compost pile comes back to life in spring.
Eli Appleby-Donald, of @inthegardenwitheliandkate, tends a productive garden in Musselburgh, East Lothian, on the principle that gardening should be fun. She has an urban garden which she has managed to make as beautiful and productive as possible, given it is north facing and mostly in shade. She considers herself a perpetual learner gardener, and has spent the last 11 years learning by experience, success, and failure.
A digital education guru by day, the lack of good information about growing in Scotland when she started, spurred Eli into putting those skills in action, and she regularly blogs and vlogs about gardening on her own website and YouTube channel, as well as appearing as a guest on others worldwide.
You can find out more about Eli and all the fun of creating your own suburban garden paradise on either her YouTube channel, or her website.