It’s still winter in Korea and when it comes to winters, Korean winters are pretty mild. As a Southern California native, I don’t think it’s a picnic to walk around with my face all numb, but it can get worse. Just ask a Canadian. You can tell who the Canadians are in winter because they’re the ones walking around in effeminate little bike shorts always yammering about how mild the winters are compared to the cold hell of Canadian winters.

Effeminate bike-short-wearing Canadians aside, the end of winter is the time to start planning and thinking about a vegetable garden for the spring. This involves making a compost bucket and preparing pots for planting.

Making the compost bucket was pretty easy. I just got a plastic bucket from the dollar store in my neighborhood and punched a bunch of holes into it. Sites about composting say to drill some holes in a bucket, but I don’t have a drill, so I MacGyvered me this poking tool out of a metal chopstick, a towel and some rubber bands.

Everything’s better when it’s heated red-hot on a stove.

First poke in the lid of the bucket.

I did it a bunch of times. Heat the poker, poke it into the bucket and turn it so it makes a round hole and repeat.

I inserted some material. The stalk and leaves of a houseplant that died while I was away, some tangerine peels, an aborted fetus, some pistachio shells and some paper towels.

It lives on my roof now.

I save the food waste and I go up to the roof a few times a week and add it to the pile. Right now, it’s pretty cold, so there’s little microbial activity. When it warms up, it should get cooking. If you want to make one yourself, just make sure you have enough wet and dry material (like paper and leaves) and that the bucket is aerated by mixing it around every few days. The more you mix it the better.