Cooch grass roots

[HimIndoors]

I finally got fed up of waiting for my new lottie to dry up enough to start digging so when the sun came out this afternoon I high-tailed it down there and set about the ground with a fork.

I spent most of the three hours I managed picking cooch grass roots out of every forkful I turned over. What I'm not sure is what on earth to do with the roots now, can I throw them on the compost heap or will the heat in there not kill them sufficiently?

I have been toying with getting an incinerator to burn off rose and bramble off cuts from the back garden (and there are a LOT of them as some of the climbing roses had been left for years and were 30' in the air looking for something to hang onto). Can I stick my cooch roots in the incinerator and use the ash on the lottie, and is there any point in doing?

I dont want to take the roots to the council recycling because they create compost from all out green waste and I have no idea if their composting system would kill the roots either.

Sorry for the rambling, any ideas out there please?

[Seahorse]

I have lots of it too and have been advised that it will survive anything but the most vigorous composting. I'm burning mine as I'm on a site that is quite happy for people to have bonfires.

If it helps at all, I got a cheap (99p) soil sieve from Wilko and am filtering everything through that, rather than hand picking the roots.

[Tracey]

Hi Himindoors

I've had ('had' hopefully) cooch grass. From the advice I had you mustn't compost it. Incinerating it seems like a good option, I wouldn't think it could surive that. There are quite a few old posts on the subject on here.

Good luck

Tracey

[rustylady]

For goodness sake don't try to compost couch grass - it will love the compost heap and grow like crazy. I dry mine out and then incinerate - someone else I know reckons you can drown them in a bucket of water. The council composting systems tend to generate far more heat than we can in our little compost bins, so I would think they could cope with couch grass if you have no other way of getting rid of it.

[Nicos]

Nice bonfire!!! ( treat yourself to an incinerator)- lovely smell

[HimIndoors]

Great, incinerator it is. I quite fancied getting one until I saw the price of a 'budget' incinerator at Homebase, £15 seemed like a lot of money for a tin bin with some holes in it. Now I have more than one reason to get one I'll dip into my deep pockets (born p north) and get burning

Thanks all for the help

[rustylady]

Great, incinerator it is. I quite fancied getting one until I saw the price of a 'budget' incinerator at Homebase, £15 seemed like a lot of money for a tin bin with some holes in it. Now I have more than one reason to get one I'll dip into my deep pockets (born p north) and get burning

Thanks all for the help

Himindoors, I too thought £15 was a lot to pay for a tin bucket with holes, but I've always wanted one (I could afford it anyway, but I'm tight) and finally gave in and bought one late last year. It's proved worth it's weight in gold. Burns hotter and faster than a traditional bonfire, and because it's totally enclosed you have no worries about fire spreading, or leaving it when it gets dark and you can't see what you're doing. So many bonfires I've put out in the past with a bucket of water before they've finished for safety reasons, and then had to dry out and relight!!!

[cottage garden]

I have huge amounts of couch grass and how ever much I dig up, more grows. Really frustrating. I have always burnt the roots in the past but I have heard that if you leave the roots in the sun to dry til they become brittle, then you can compost them. Personally I wouldn't risk it.

Another thought is to add them with other perennial weeds in a large bucket of water and use the water after a month for liquid feed. Not as high in nutrients as nettles or comfrey but still a good addition.

This year I am going to try an idea in 'the allotment book' and grow outside tomatoes where the couch grass grows. Apparently the tomatoes can kill it. Anything is worth a try.

[jeannine]

Sounds obvious but if you use an incinerator don't do the daft thing I did and use it on some grass. (Unless you want a nice black hole for a few months till the grass grows back)!

[Seahorse]

This year I am going to try an idea in 'the allotment book' and grow outside tomatoes where the couch grass grows. Apparently the tomatoes can kill it. Anything is worth a try.

Interesting! Might give that a go too!

[HimIndoors]

Another thought is to add them with other perennial weeds in a large bucket of water and use the water after a month for liquid feed. Not as high in nutrients as nettles or comfrey but still a good addition.

Do I need to drag the roots/weeds out after a while or leave them in the water to eventually rot down??

The site had a number of fairly large thistles and I was going to burn the taproots of those too but if I can get nutrients out of them mores the better

[Two_Sheds]

I try to avoid bonfires - they aren't really acceptable these days (smell, mess, eco-unfriendly).
I drown my perennial weeds in a water butt... they rot down in a couple of weeks, stink to high heaven but the liquid is full of nutrients...you could tip it onto the compost heap to aid decomposition, but I tend to just up-end the water butt and let it drain into the soil (I place it on a patch that I want fertilised), then I high-tail it home leaving the stink behind me

[cottage garden]

Yes, like two sheds, I tend to just let the roots rot down. I have three plastic dustbins in a corner of my garden. One with roots in, one full of comfrey and one full of nettles plus water of course.

The stink is incredible when you take the lids off!!