Composting

[Slarti]

For the first time in many years I have got loads of weed roots (nettles, bramble, ground elder) and tops piled up on my garden where they were extracted.

I also have one of those green conical composters with a lid, that we got from the council on the cheap, quite a few years ago that is empty.

If I just chuck the above stuff in, will it compost?

I've never been enough into gardening to know that sort of thing.


Slarti

[Lootman]

I try and avoid putting the more pervasive kinds of weeds, like bindweed and ground elder, in my compost. These more virulent kinds of weeds seem very adept at seeding and rooting themselves in any environment, let alone a warm, damp nutritious one.

I also don't put kitchen waste directly in my compost as that just encourages animals to make a mess of everything.

But other people I know do compost everything, so I suspect there are skills that I lack which make it OK to compost weeds.

[tjh290633]

I have always put that sort of thing on a bonfire. My compost bin is a couple of roughly metre cubes, with wooden corners and board sides. I fill up the first which takes about a year, then move it into the second, and use it in the spring of the following year. I put some old carpet pieces on top over a plastic sack, and the heat generated is considerable. The slow worms enjoy it, and ants and worms usually colonise it.

Your "green thing" may well work, but it has to be soft green matter, not anything woody and certainly not perpetual roots.

TJH

[Gengulphus]

In theory, if you can get it to warm up enough, the heat will kill all the nasty stuff - weed seeds, roots, etc. But in practice, I don't think that's at all easily achievable in the garden, because there's too much stuff on the edges that doesn't really heat up, and the amount of stirring needed to give everything its turn in the middle is considerable. You really want the sort of scale of a council composting site to do that - lots of material being composted at once in big piles to get the heat going and have more middle-of-heap relative to edge-of-heap, being stirred by bulldozers, and even then various stories I've heard about council compost suggest it's often not done quite right...

So I use the council green bin collection for the nasty stuff and my own composting bins for prunings, grass mowings and the like. Some kitchen waste as well - vegetable peelings, for instance - but not cooked food, and the waste from my paper shredder goes in as well, though not too much at once and it does need to be stirred in well with the other stuff.

Gengulphus

[ReformedCharacter]

For the first time in many years I have got loads of weed roots (nettles, bramble, ground elder) and tops piled up on my garden where they were extracted.

I also have one of those green conical composters with a lid, that we got from the council on the cheap, quite a few years ago that is empty.

If I just chuck the above stuff in, will it compost?

I've never been enough into gardening to know that sort of thing.

Slarti

You may be able to put some of that through a shredder, it depends how much you've got. What you do with the shreddings is another matter. Good mulch etc. I use them round a vegetable bed.

RC

[Slarti]

Thanks for all the replies.

It looks as if I am back to trips down to the tip so I can chuck it into the green waste skip there as, if there is the slightest hint of soil showing in the green wheelie bin, they leave it with a yellow tag telling you off. And I can't be bothered to wash the roots or mess about hiding them under grass.

Slarti

[panamagold]

If you find your compost pile/bin/corall is failing to generate enough heat to enable it to operate efficiently then when starting a fresh consignment sprinkle some bonemeal and/or bloodmeal between the layers along with some manure. In no time at all you'll be creating kettle boiling temperatures.

If you want to kick off worm composting then red wigglers are the way to go and local fishing stores invariably stock them.

I have, in the past, embarked on both the above procedures successfully. I know its not considered very rock 'n roll but the achievement value was well worth the effort and it was also, sure as hell, fun.

[bungeejumper]

In theory, if you can get it to warm up enough, the heat will kill all the nasty stuff - weed seeds, roots, etc. But in practice, I don't think that's at all easily achievable in the garden, because there's too much stuff on the edges that doesn't really heat up, and the amount of stirring needed to give everything its turn in the middle is considerable. You really want the sort of scale of a council composting site to do that - lots of material being composted at once in big piles to get the heat going and have more middle-of-heap relative to edge-of-heap, being stirred by bulldozers

Precisely. Weeds are part of what the green bins are there for. Anaerobic composting, I think they call it - it can get hotter than anything you'd really want to have going on in your garden.

In response to another poster, would I put bindweed, ground elder or couch grass through the shredder? Or ivy (shudder)? No, no, a thousand times, no. Even a quarter of an inch of chopped-up ivy root can be enough to put you on the road to perdition. And just think how many quarter inch pieces you'd have.

BJ