Bonfires

[Pyewacket]

Bonjour Roitelet,
Please tell more about growing courgettes out of pile of horrible weeds, dont the weeds just grow again? My weeds are nasty perennials like dandelions,nettles & some I haven't even found named in books! Could I use those?

Pyewacket

[roitelet]

Hi Pyewacket,

It's dead easy really. I made a container out of chicken wire with posts at each corner, lined bottom with loose laid bricks and (to aid the digging out) then wrapped the outside in old carpet. The whole thing is about 3ft cubed, not very pretty but well hidden. In to it goes all the things that I don't want on the compost heap, weeds of all kinds, some turf, potato tops, tomato plants and anything that I think just might have something nasty. The top is then covered with either landscape membrane and/or more old carpet. Do this in the late autumn when the heap is full. When planting time comes just plant through whatever is covering the heap and hey presto. To aid watering you could sink mineral water bottles with the bottoms cut off. I am aming for 2 plants in the heap.

If there are lots of weeds in the heap they will have taken a lot of soil with them. They can't regrow because they are all covered. The following autumn dig out the heap and spread the seived result on the flower beds, NOT on the lottie, then start all over again. It also maks harvesting easier and there is not so much chance of missing one and then finding a marrow

I am now storing the next lot of 'rubbish' in plastic sacks to fill the heap next autumn, I may even construct another.

[Two_Sheds]

You could drown your weeds. I put mine in a water butt and let them rot/stew for a good long while to make fertiliser. Then empty it out onto your beds - stinks to high heaven, so it must be good stuff.