It's been an unusually good December to continue composting. I'm still collecting food scraps in a bucket in the house, and I also have a compost bucket in the break room at Central Library where once a week I bring home the orange peels, coffee grounds, and other food scraps from library staff. I collect all of these things in 5 gallon Menards buckets I keep outside on the patio that we aren't using during the cold season. It has been a warm, snow-free December, so once a bucket is full, I bring it to the back of the yard and dump in onto the compost heap. Then I add several handfuls of dried leaves on top.
When it stays below freezing and the food scraps in the bucket freezes, I just move it to the far edge of the patio and bring another bucket over nearer the kitchen door and start filling that. I have about 6 buckets sitting upside down on the patio so that I can just fill them one after another until we get a thaw and I can dump the contents onto the compost pile. (I keep the buckets upside down until I use them to keep the snow out of them. Also, don't stack them, because they freeze together and it is almost impossible to pull them apart.)
Mulching the remaining onions and leeks
I will have Ishikara onions (a large, non-bulbing green onion)and leeks we didn't use yet. The year before last I had remaining Ishikara's in the garden and they came back the following spring really well; they weren't woody or fiberous and they tasted great. It was wonderful to have something fresh and ready to eat from the garden in April. I don't know if I can replicate that with the leeks, but it is worth trying. On December 19 I added about a two inch layer of dried leaves on top of the leeks and onions to help protect them from fluctuating temps and we'll see what happens next spring.
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