Composting weeds?

[Kimbo]

I have a lot of weeds to clear on my new allotment and wonder if I can compost them and if I have to put anything on them before hand?

[Sue]

Kim
Some observations about what to do with weeds on the allotment.

Never, never put couch grass roots, bind weed roots in any compost you'll spread it everywhere. You can either put them in a council green bin, burn them or try drowning them, old plastic dustbin with water should do the trick, try keeping them underwater for 3months minimum.

Often if your compost heap doesn't get hot enough things like nettle seeds and other weed seeds (and tomato seeds) will grow and your allotment will be carpeted. I speak from experience on the nettle front...

I'm wary about putting any mature weeds in the compost bin, so I keep separate bins on the go to make sure they don't contaminate the compost that will end up spread on the allotment. Have been trying the laying them out on a tarp trick to burn them in the sun, which would work fine if we stopped having downpours.

I wait for total rot down in my weed bins, sieve it out and then use the resulting earth somewhere where it won't see the light of day, ie when planting up pots, bottom of potato barrels, bottom of raised beds etc to minimise the problem. All helps to minimise the problems of regrowth.

Get hens, their pooh helps heat up the compost heap - thought one of mine was on fire yesterday, so much steam coming off when I opened the lid. And you can also feed them a lot of weeds and they love grasses with seeds too.

Hope this helps
Sue

[Kimbo]

If I treated the weeds with round up before composting would this help?

[Two_Sheds]

If you put Roundup on, there won't be any weeds left to compost.

but you still have to dig the dead roots out of things like bramble & perennial nettle

[Kimbo]

If you put Roundup on, there won't be any weeds left to compost.

but you still have to dig the dead roots out of things like bramble & perennial nettle

I think i might have two compost bins, one for weeds to rot down in (with the aid of roundup) and one for composting good stuff, that way I can keep things tidy on the lottie and get rid of the weeds. Are dock leaves ok to compost?

In regards to nettles i believe you can make some kind of liquid feed from them by putting them in water - is this right? Hope so as I have plenty on the plot and an old plastic bin going begging.

[Two_Sheds]

I compost all my weeds (waste not, want not).

Anything that may spread (that means anything with perennial roots, like bindweed, couch grass, buttercup, bramble) has to die before it goes on the heap. Kill them by drowning or by drying them in the sun until brown and crispy.

if you put weed seeds on the heap, they will turn into weed plants. So don't let anything go to seed. If it does, put it in the black bin (or in your enemy's strawberry patch)