We have a "garden", consisting of pumpkins, gourds, melons, and tomato plants. No, I did not plant any of these things on purpose...it is the result of composting combined with sub-zero temperatures last winter. When I compost food waste, the heat of the composting process normally destroys the seeds and they do not germinate. When your compost pile freezes solid and never reheats in the spring, things get hairy. I mixed the compost with some barren soil at the beginning of the summer, and I did not screen it due to the fact that nothing was going to be planted there. Now every plant imaginable is growing in it. There are a lot of weeds, and vegetable plants.

I did have a heater for the compost pile to help it along, it was a 60 watt heater made from an old toaster heating element. 12 volt AC current was supplied to it via a 14 gauge cable from a transformer ripped out of an old HP Plotter. It worked, but it didn't make sense to burn 11 cents worth of electricity from coal each day when it wouldn't hurt to just store the waste in the bin over the winter.