I don't turn my compost. I poke holes in it with a broom handle, but that's about as energetic as I get.
When I mentioned this to Kayla Siefried, she had reassuring news. In a passive compost bin, adding a good mix of materials in small layers can reduce the need for turning.
Kayla is the Education Director at the Compost Education Centre in Victoria, BC, where she teaches adult programs and tends the demonstration gardens. She joined me on the Food Garden Life Show to talk about composting at home, from choosing a system to keeping it usable through winter.
Her starting point is practical: choose a method that works for your life.
A composting system that fits your garden
A backyard bin that you feed a little at a time works differently from a hot compost pile built in one go. And a worm bin offers another option altogether.
Kayla walks us through four approaches:
Passive backyard composting: Add fruit and vegetable scraps and garden materials as they become available, mixing greens with browns.
Hot composting: Gather enough material to build a substantial pile at once, then manage its moisture, temperature, and turning.
Worm composting: Use composting worms in a suitable bin to process food scraps. This can work indoors and in small spaces.
A food waste digester: A different approach to processing kitchen waste. The digester Kayla describes releases breakdown products into the surrounding soil rather than providing a regular harvest of finished compost.
Think about what you want to process, how much space you have, and how much attention you want to give it.
Location matters, too. A bin at the far end of the garden might be easy to ignore once the snow arrives. Kayla encourages gardeners to consider access from the kitchen as well as rodent resistance when choosing and locating a bin.
Fall leaves are worth keeping
Leaves are useful both as mulch and as a carbon-rich ingredient for compost. Saving some now gives you something to add alongside kitchen scraps later.
In our conversation, Kayla describes alternating small layers of nitrogen-rich greens, such as fruit and vegetable scraps or fresh grass clippings, with carbon-rich browns, such as fallen deciduous leaves.
Those layers help avoid a dense mass of wet kitchen scraps. If you've been adding only food scraps for months, she suggests mixing in leaves to improve the balance and structure.
Keep a supply beside your bin so they're easy to add throughout the year.
Does compost need turning or watering?
It depends on the materials and the method.
Kayla finds that a covered passive bin receiving plenty of fruit and vegetable scraps often gets enough moisture from those ingredients. A pile dominated by dry garden waste may need water.
That reminded me of a neighbour whose compost bin was full of peanut shells. The bin had a lid, the shells stayed dry, and very little was happening. Moisture was missing, along with a broader mix of ingredients.
Kayla's useful moisture comparison is a wrung-out sponge. If the material is dry, add water. If it's waterlogged, the air spaces the decomposers need can fill with water.
Turning is part of her hot composting routine. For a passive bin with well-mixed ingredients and enough air, she explains that frequent turning may be unnecessary. A smelly, compacted pile needs attention, though, which can include adding browns and aerating it.
Composting through a cold winter
Winter composting in Victoria looks different from winter composting in Toronto. Kayla has also composted through Ontario winters, including shovelling a path to her bin in Ottawa.
Her advice is to keep adding fruit and vegetable scraps, with browns, as long as you can access the bin. When the contents freeze, decomposition pauses. The material can begin breaking down again when it thaws.
A little preparation helps:
Keep leaves accessible. A stockpile buried under snow is harder to use.
Have other browns ready. Torn paper egg cartons and plain brown paper bags can help when leaves are out of reach. Avoid plastic-coated paper and tear paper up so it doesn't form flat mats.
Allow extra space. Frozen scraps accumulate without shrinking much, so a second bin can be useful.
Think about the route. Make the bin somewhere you're willing and able to reach in winter.
The pleasure of making your own compost
One thing that comes through in this conversation is how much Kayla enjoys the process itself: opening a bin, seeing the life inside, and discovering what has become of the scraps and garden clippings.
Making compost gives us a useful garden amendment. It also gives us a closer look at something happening all around us: organic matter breaking down and returning to the soil.
And it can begin with something as simple as keeping a pile of leaves beside the bin.
Composting resources
Visit the Compost Education Centre and explore its free fact sheets. Kayla points listeners towards the sheets on backyard composting, worm composting, food waste digesters, and hot composting. There's also a sheet about urban leaves.