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Tag: winter composting

Let it snow – but carry on composting

Posted on by Julie Halford

 Snow is on the ground at Great Green Systems HQ right now – providing a timely reminder not to leave your little green friend out in the cold. (I’m thinking of your compost bin but perhaps you have other little green friends).

Keep ‘elfy’ conditions in your composter

Follow our cold weather tips and keeeep composting! (with apologies to Strictly Come Dancing…)

Green Johanna

  • Check that the vents at the bottom of the Johanna are not blocked by leaves or debris (or snow!) Air is taken in at ground level so keep this area clear so that air can enter freely. The incoming air goes up past the four ventilation plates on the inside of the base plate, past the maturing compost layer up into the decomposing compost where it provides oxygen for the composting micro-organisms.
  • Also check that the Johanna’s Insulating Jacket doesn’t cover the ventilation holes. The jacket should be installed with the two upper sections pulled down so they overlap the section underneath by about 5 cms. Doing this leaves the ventilation holes clear.
  • In freezing weather limit ventilation through the lid’s ventilation system – twist the lid towards the minimum setting (in summer it should be fully open on the maximum setting).
  • The pre-Christmas period is a good time for getting some great carbon sources ready. Ordering presents or appliances online means they might arrive packed in lovely, corrugated cardboard, which is fantastic for adding airflow to the bin.

Packaging provides airflow

  • Now you’ll be glad you stored those leaves. Keep them in lidded containers to keep them dry. If you have loads, keep a large composter, such as the Graf Thermo King 900L, specifically for leaf mulch and take some leaves from the top as carbon sources for the Johanna. Dead leaves are great for absorbing moisture in waste with a high water content, such as bokashi bin contents or fruit waste.
  • If you see tree surgeons at work locally, it’s worth asking if you could take some woodchips or they might deliver them to you for free. Wood chips are good for creating airflow and adding plenty of fungi to the bin.
  • Give the bin’s contents a boost by adding bokashi bran, ground coffee granules or a layer of soil or mature compost.  
  • If you’re setting your Johanna up in winter, don’t be tempted to rush and omit the foundation layer of around 15 -20cms of woody garden waste. Some people ask us if they really have to do this, and the answer is yes. From the beginning, it helps to create airflow from the bottom up through the composter as well as adding structure for drainage. Then add two bucketsful of soil or mature compost to add a healthy amount of micro-organisms right from the start.  

Bokashi bins

  • If you’ve kept your bokashi bins fermenting in a shaded spot outside in the summer, move them indoors. Bokashi bins shouldn’t be exposed to extreme temperatures, which might mean micro-organisms overheating or freezing depending on the season.  When the bin is full and needs to be left to ferment for two to three weeks, if you want it out of the way store it in a garage or shed as long as it won’t freeze.  

Wormery

  • Wormeries should also be placed where they won’t be exposed to extremes of temperatures. Depending on your location, move an outdoors wormery to a sheltered area or if it is to stay outside, cover with a tarpaulin.  Keep worms warm with plenty of bedding and a hessian blanket.

Green Cone

  •  Stock up on accelerator powder – you will need more than usual to boost the process now that there is less sun to provide energy for the solar-powered unit.  
  • Even if you have more food waste than usual over the Christmas period, make sure you never allow food waste to come higher than the Cone’s underground basket. Food waste must never be above ground level inside the Cone itself.

Remember your usual best composting practices, whatever the weather:

  • Regular feeding: Keep adding to the bin to maintain the composting process. The generous 330 litre size of the Green Johanna means the mass of contents acts as an insulating factor.  If your household is small and struggles to add enough content in winter with the lack of gardening clippings, accept food waste from neighbours, as some of our customers do.
  • Chop items up. Smaller items provide a larger surface area for more microbes to work on.  This means higher temperatures and faster breakdown.
  • Ensure a good balance – adding a caddy of food waste (rich in nitrogen) followed by a caddy of carbon-rich materials (dead leaves, shredded paper and cardboard, twigs, branches, woodchips) is a good habit to get into.
  • Check moisture levels – especially if you’ve added a lot of dry autumn leaves (carbon) which could make the mix dry. Composting contents should have a moisture level of around 50 per cent, with the consistency of a wrung-out bath sponge. Add rainwater from a water butt (in a watering can with a fine rose) if the materials are becoming too dry. Don’t just check the top layer, get handfuls from lower down the bin too. Check by using a moisture meter or by doing the squeeze test – wearing gloves, take large handfuls of compost in both hands and squeeze – only a drop or two of liquid should emerge. If there are no drops, the compost is too dry and needs watering.
  • Regular aeration – it’s important to keep adding air to the bin as the aerobic microbes breaking down the waste need air to breathe. Without air, the contents will turn anaerobic and start to smell.   

Don’t forget to pay attention – getting into the habit of knowing what’s happening in the bin enables you to take corrective measures to prevent problems. 

Keeping compost warm when temperatures drop

Posted on by Julie Halford

Hot composting is basically a set of techniques. By following these techniques you can achieve higher temperatures and faster decomposition than traditional regular composting, which is usually referred to as cold composting.

If you want the simplest way to achieve higher temperatures, then using a well-designed unit such as the Green Johanna, along with its Insulating Jacket, is your best bet. We have many customers who hot compost without the jacket, but they tend to be experienced composters who want active involvement in managing the bin.  

Some members of the Great Green Systems team keep the Johanna’s jacket on virtually all year round, removing it in the summer during hot weather when the compost temperature approaches 70 degrees Celsius.

 We recommend that in winter if external temperatures fall lower than 5 degrees Celsius the jacket should be added to avoid the composting process stalling.  

The jacket gives you more control. As well as helping to raise the temperature, you also have the option of removing it in order to lower the temperature if it gets too hot. Temperatures above 70 degrees will become too hot for the composting creatures to survive. If these aerobic micro-organisms start to die off, the process could stall so the jacket should be removed to allow the bin to cool down.

A Great Green Systems Johanna and jacket in January this year when the ground temperature was at zero, below.

But inside the Johanna the compost kept warm at 40 degrees C.

Some customers have expressed concerns that the Insulating Jacket will make the Johanna too hot for worms; this is not a problem because worms can easily enter and leave the composter through the small holes in the base plate. At temperatures above 30 degrees Celsius they will move where it is cooler, usually the bottom of the bin where the compost is maturing, or they can leave the bin completely.

A good fit

The Insulating Jacket is made from polyethylene and comprises three ring sections and a lid piece. When fitting the jacket, it’s essential that the bottom section does not cover the vents at the sides of the Johanna’s base as these are necessary for airflow.

The two upper sections should be added so that they overlap the section below by about 5 cms, ensuring that the ventilation holes at the top of the composter remain uncovered.  The jacket fits snugly so that no cold draughts can get in between the jacket and the bin.

 Composting outcomes depend on various factors and that includes the composter’s level of interest and involvement. Of course, as keen composters ourselves we are bound to say it’s a fascinating subject that can become an enjoyable hobby, but don’t just take our word for it.

Adam Johannes, also known to his customers and followers as Compost Guy, says he really enjoys the active hands-on involvement of aerating his Johanna. Anthea Rossouw, who has been teaching composting using Johannas for decades, both in this country and in South Africa, says she loves to see people who started out knowing nothing becoming evangelical about their new interest. A new customer who took up composting recently on retirement admits cheerfully that she has become ‘obsessed’.

We hear so many different stories depending on various locations covering the length and breadth of the country, whether that is in sheltered inland areas, wind-battered coastal regions, rural or urban, and indeed countries abroad too.

Even with the jacket added, don’t forget your good composting habits:

  • Feed regularly
  • Balance carbon/nitrogen ratios
  • Aerate regularly
  • Chop items small
  • Check moisture levels

And remember the Johanna was designed in Sweden to withstand temperatures of -20 degrees C. So wherever you are, with the jacket on, your Johanna is good to go this winter.  

Warm up this winter – get your jacket on

Posted on by Julie Halford

It takes all sorts to make a world, as the saying goes.

At Great Green Systems we know that it takes all sorts to make compost.

We never cease to be amazed at the different results that people get from their Green Johanna. For some people fast compost is the priority, while others want finer, well-matured compost and are prepared to wait longer. Some users are less interested in compost and more concerned with being able to recycle as much of their food and garden waste as possible, diverting it from landfill.

Some customers say they rarely aerate their bin’s contents but still get results they are happy with.  Some use cooler temperatures and get a bin full of worms working away on their compost, while others tells us they never remove the insulating jacket and have no problems.

 Whatever your composting style, one thing we’re all on the same page about right now is maintaining temperatures warm enough to keep the composting process going in the bleak midwinter.

Here at Great Green Systems HQ in Yorkshire, snow is covering the ground but the Johanna in my garden is clearly feeling toasty in her jacket. After a night of sub-zero temperatures, the ground temperature this morning was zero but the first compost temperature we took today was 40 degrees Celsius.

From zero….

 

…to hero

At the coldest time of the year, with temperatures plummeting by the day, the insulation provided by the insulating jacket is invaluable to facilitate regular temperatures high enough to keep the Johanna’s contents breaking down at pace. (In warmer weather, the jacket should be removed if compost temperatures exceed 70 degrees C as this will be too hot for beneficial micro-organisms to survive.)

Additional ways to boost the winter composting process are by:

  • adding beneficial bacteria in the form of bokashi bran
  • adding a bucketful of mature compost or the fermented pre-compost from a bokashi bin, which also help to give your bin’s contents a shot in the arm
  • ensuring that waste materials are chopped into small pieces as these will break down faster than larger items. When adding stored garden waste, make sure pieces are no bigger than 5cms as the more surface area there is for microbes to work on, the faster waste will break down, generating more heat.

Differences in climate and soil biology according to location are factors that can affect composting outcomes, as well as differences in contents due to the household’s diets. People who cook from scratch using a lot of fruit and vegetables will produce more food waste (rich in nitrogen) than people who regularly use ready meals. So two neighbours with the same bin might have different results depending on the number of people in the household and their diet, plus the type and amount of waste their garden produces.  

We have heard of Johanna users who only add garden waste and are happy with the compost produced  –  their garden waste must comprise a good balance of nitrogen-rich Greens (fresh grass clippings and green leaves) and carbon-rich woody Browns. We are surprised that some customers say they don’t aerate the contents as regularly as we recommend – we can only imagine they must be good at providing air pockets in their carbon-rich contents, thanks to inputs such as wood chips and corrugated egg cartons etc.

Full Monty composting (not what you think…)

Some compost fans, like the team here at Great Green Systems, become fascinated by the process and go Full Monty, with a thermometer, pH and moisture measure and water wand among their kit.  We also cherish our stored bags full of raked, shredded autumn leaves and wood chips ready and waiting to go into action as part of an easily accessed carbon army to get through a long winter.

It’s a fascinating subject, but it can be as simple or as involved as you want it to be.

One member of our GGS team is out early every morning to check the temperature of his Johanna and this forms a larger proportion of his daily conversation than might be considered strictly normal but, as we said, it takes all sorts…   He also has a woodchipper to shred the twigs and branches in his garden waste.  In autumn our colleague sets off with his rake to gather the rich bounty of fallen leaves from quiet streets in his neighbourhood (not busy roads where the leaves could be contaminated by lead pollution). In doing this, he says he is also providing a free health and safety service by reducing the risk of slippery leaves on pavements.

We advise people to follow the golden composting rules regarding materials/oxygen/moisture as we want them to be as successful as possible. Some people tell us they break the rules but still get away with it. We all know the type – those Rebels Without a Rulebook whose first job when opening any piece of new equipment is to throw away the instruction manual and proceed by trial and error.  

Perhaps they’re onto something. We know that what puts some people off trying composting is the fear that they might get it wrong. So perhaps we should say there is only really one golden rule: it’s better to start – and proceed by observing and adapting –  than never to start at all.

 To borrow a well-known slogan – just do it.

Julie

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