Breath on the Wind
New member
It is winter in the NE with temps around freezing. A month ago I chopped up my first garden and the collection cooked for a bit then stopped. Since then, I have chopped up all the leaves "leaving" a damp pile around 4' diameter. The leaves weren't cooking so I added in some Urea fertilizer ( 45-0-0 about 3lbs) for nitrogen and wet the mix while stirring. Is it too cold to start cooking? My efforts aren't producing much heat but the leaves are very slowly turning black. Did I add enough nitrogen? The previous little cooker did not stink and I didn't add the entire 5 Lb bag as I wanted to avoid a problem. Would it make a difference if I could jump start it with some heat? I am thinking of reflected sunlight, or greenhouse effect... I would not simply want to add heat for the entire process though. It would eventually have to be self sustaining.I am also thinking that a winter compost pile may require an insulated container, but this would only work if I could get it started in the first place.