composting weeds

[Urban Ayisha]

so... whats the lowdown with composting weeds? went on holiday for a couple of weeks and returned to overgrown patches! a few had run to seed, but its not couch grass or anything else perennial, is it ok to compost if the compost is not to be used for a good few years? otherwise, whats the alternative? folks say burning but i'm not great at starting fires!

[Millymollymandy]

I compost them all apart from bindweed roots, but then there will always be some that get mixed in with the other weeds (generally I try to remember to chuck the roots elsewhere whilst I'm weeding). I've got so many annual weeds in my veg patch that it won't make any difference whether they are coming from my compost or wherever else they might come from! And weeds make up a good proportion of my summer composting material.

[Flo]

Compost them and make sure your heap gets hot. There'll be no problems then.

[Annpan]

I'm with MMM here, I compost all my weeds.... I try to keep out the bindweed and ground elder root and burn them instead, but in all honesty, it all goes in and it all seems alright so-far.

[eccentric_emma]

I just chuck it all in. I have given up on trying to beat the weeds so just take advantage of all the lovely nutrients in them instead. But yes, try and get the compost heap as hot as possible because that does kill the seeds.

Actually recently I've been pretty lazy and just 'weed and lay' i.e. pulling them up and letting them rot on the top of the soil as a direct feed (this was recommended to me whilst I was WWOOFing).

I think the trick is just to keep on top of the weeding!

[happy place]

with hardy weeds like ground elder you can try drowning it in the water butt and when it has turned to mush stick it on the compost heap

[Muscroj]

As long as the roots have had chance to dry out and are well & truly dead you shouldn't have too much problem. Things like dandelion could be laid out in the sun to shrivel before adding to the compost. We just dug out a load of mint that was marching it's way across the raspberries, I've cut off all the stems & chucked that straight on the heap, but the roots have been spread across the surface & I won't add any material to the top of that heap until I'm sure the roots aren't going to get going again.